The Travel Critic

Let’s be absolutely clear from the start: I don’t camp. Anyone who’s read my reviews on my website or stumbled across me elsewhere online will know this. Camping, to me, is about as appealing as elective root canal surgery performed in a field. Four-star hotels I can handle, five stars I actively adore, but sleeping in a tent? That’s less Four Seasons, more four weeks of SAS selection training in the Brecon Beacons.

Don’t take me wrong, I’m not high-maintenance. I don’t waft about demanding scented candles, monogrammed slippers and a butler called Juan Carlos to press my trousers. But nor am I inclined to pay for the privilege of lying on damp ground while passing Labradors stick their snouts through my sleeping bag zip. My prior encounters with camping involve collapsing tents, rain dripping strategically down the back of my neck, and waking with mild hypothermia while some earnest outdoorsy type assures me this is “living.”

So imagine my horror when I found myself, against all instinct and training, dispatched on a corporate away day that involved actual camping. Not “networking with biscuits” camping. Actual survival-in-the-woods stuff. There was firewood to be chopped. There were songs (bad ones) around the campfire. There was, I’m ashamed to report, some group “bonding.” And yes, brace yourself, there was camping. Shocking, I know.

But here’s the kicker. I quite enjoyed it.

Before you faint, let me qualify that. This wasn’t camping as I know it. This was Home Farm Glamping. Which, to be blunt, is camping with all the ghastly bits surgically removed and replaced with things civilised people actually like: proper beds with mattresses, furniture that isn’t made of mud, and even decking with a barbecue outside your tent. A chest of drawers! I didn’t know whether to fold my socks into it or just weep quietly with gratitude.

The whole thing is faintly absurd, calling it camping when it’s basically a boutique hotel that someone forgot to put walls around, but it works. I didn’t wake up damp. I didn’t wake up furious. I woke up with a decent night’s sleep in the middle of a field, and for me that’s borderline miraculous.

So, would I willingly book in for another week of campfire singalongs, kumbaya nonsense and fending off colleagues armed with marshmallows? No. Let’s not get silly. But if, for reasons beyond my control, I found myself dragged camping again, then Home Farm is the place I’d want to end up. It’s civilised, it’s comfortable, and it has just enough outdoorsy veneer to convince the dog people they’re still “in touch with nature.”

And if you catch me back there voluntarily, please do stage an intervention. But for now, against all expectation, I’ll admit it: I had a good time.