Despite her reservations, Sarah Foster found farm-style glamping to be a memorable experience for all the right reasons

DRIVING to Dolphinholme, a campsite in Lancaster that is part of the Feather Down Farms group, I must admit that I felt like crying.

Harassed as usual, I had set off with my husband Paul and children Ella and Hannah straight from school on a Friday afternoon.

It was pouring with rain – hardly the most auspicious start to a camping trip – and, to be perfectly honest, this was not my idea of how best to spend a family weekend.

The real low point came when we stopped to check directions – only to discover that, due to crossed wires over which campsite we were heading to, we had been travelling for an hour to the wrong one.

I began to suspect that I was just not cut out for camping. The only previous time we had attempted the experience, it was an unmitigated disaster. We had arrived feeling gung ho, ready to erect the tent, but, due to a combination of high winds and our ineptitude, one of the poles had snapped, leaving us to spend the night at a local pub. Surely, I thought, it can’t be any worse than that?

Finally arriving at the site, I remained unsure. From the outside, the tents had the distinct look of being Army-issue, and it seemed hard to believe that this was indeed glamping, and not its basic counterpart. Venturing inside, however, I felt a wave of relief. The tent’s focal point was a cosy, wood-burning stove. There was a solid wood floor and a sink unit complete with all the kitchen equipment you could need, and behind curtains were a double and two bunk beds.

Having already heard of it, Ella and Hannah, aged six and four, were ecstatic at the sight of the cupboard bed – literally a cupboard at chest level with doors on either side. I must admit that, for me, it was a blessing to open another wooden door and find a proper flushing toilet, albeit styled as an old-fashioned bench with a lid.

Feather Down Farms tents are modelled on a 1920s farmhouse, complete with vintage tins and oil lamps, and this clever design – the brainchild of Dutchman Luite Moraal, who is also behind the hugely successful Center Parcs brand – makes them instantly appealing.

You do indeed feel as if you have been transported to the past and, far from being onerous, this is, in fact, greatly liberating, making you wonder why you ever considered your phone and iPad to be so vital to existence.

The Northern Echo:
Tents have all the home comforts

It takes forever to boil water – you just adapt to this – and the lack of a fridge is compensated for by the availability of hot water bottles filled with ice. There is also an honesty shop selling local produce and essentials and a requirement of all Feather Down Farms is that they have chickens whose eggs are available – free of charge – for guests to collect.

The joy my children had in opening the chicken coop and scooping still-warm eggs from beneath feathered bottoms was immeasurable, and, jumping on the trampoline in the barn, Hannah called out: “This is the best holiday ever.”

It is easy to see why the Feather Down Farms concept works. Once the poor relation of holidays, camping has now been reinvented to offer a much more comfortable experience so that if, like me, you don’t fancy traipsing through a field in the middle of the night to use the toilet, you don’t have to.

Our fellow campers at Dolphinholme seemed just like us – families wanting the benefits, but not the privations, of the outdoor experience and if that seems a bit wimpy, well, at least it got me under canvas. Part of the charm of the whole experience is that you are camping on a working farm, and, on our arrival, we were greeted by farmer John Gorst, whose family has made its living on the land since the 1730s. Naturally hospitable and with a twinkle in his eye, John is about as far removed from the stereotypical attitude of “Get off my land!” as it is possible to be.

Dolphinholme offers twice-weekly tours, in which John talks to guests about its history and current stock of about 2,400 goats.

The Northern Echo:
All Feather Down Farms have their own resident hens

The Lancaster farm was one of the first in the UK to adopt the Feather Down brand, which originated in the Netherlands and is now also in the US, France and Germany. For John and his family, it represented the opportunity to go into tourism without all the incumbent responsibility.

“Feather Down Farms do all the marketing, finance and admin – all we do is download who’s coming and make the tents ready,” he says. “They own the tents and we own the ground, and they pay us rental per occupied day.

“It’s everything they said it would be.

We couldn’t abide people coming on the site and being a pain but those who come here are very nice. We get mainly people who work for the NHS, teachers and law professionals.”

As short breaks go, a stay at a Feather Down Farm isn’t cheap, but it is designed to be exclusive, with no more than ten tents per site. Each one is individual, having been adapted, rather than designed, for purpose, and we were lucky that ours was a paradise for children, with a barn converted to a play area complete with trampoline, tyre swing and giant slide; a zip wire and a rope swing above a stream.

John says: “We were a working dairy farm and we changed to goats in 2007, when we had already decided on the campsite. We thought the kids and the kids would go together well.”

Our two certainly loved feeding the goats – something that, as city children, they had rarely had the opportunity to do before – and we loved the fact that they could roam freely within sight of the tent. For girls who normally don’t like getting dirty, they were surprisingly unconcerned about spending most of their time caked in grime.

The Northern Echo:
Picture of the past: accommodation is modelled on 1920s farmhouses

If the Featherdown experience was liberating for them, it was equally so for us – it felt like, if only for two days, we all went a bit feral, enjoying the freedom of our surroundings without the cares of everyday life. For John, this is precisely the point.

“You can go wild here – no one has any responsibilities,” he says. “Hopefully, it’s freedom.”

  • featherdown.co.uk, 01420-80804. Prices start from £249 for a twonight weekend stay in September.