Glamping at Ilfracombe Farm Review

**Collaborative post**

As you already know, since this towny gave camping a go with the kids for the first time a few years ago, we have enjoyed many camping adventures as a family. There is something very special about being away from the hustle and bustle of our busy lives and getting back to the basics and enjoying nature at its finest.

We have just returned from another adventure, this time Glamping in North Devon. We stayed in one of the Feather Down Glamping locations, Ilfracombe Farm.

What is Feather Down Glamping?

Simply put, possibly the most comfortable way to enjoy glamping but with a lot more added luxury than your basic tent offers. Feather Down offers glamping holidays on farms and estates across the UK and Europe.

Depending on the location you choose there are different types of accommodation available from a Canvas Lodge, Canvas Frills Lodge or even a log cabin in a few of the locations.

While Glamping at one of the Feather Down locations you will stay with the farmer on their farm in luxury accommodation. There is no electricity or hot water, your light comes from candles and oil lamps in your lodge and you will cook all your food on a wood burning stove which also provides your heat.

Think of it as a cross between Glamping and a cottage holiday, you’ll have all the luxurious bedding and comfortable beds to ensure you get a good nights sleep and unlike camping/camping, you’ll not have to trek off to the toilet block as you’ve your own indoor toilet. There is even your own kitchen area with a wood burning stove and a sink with cold running water. The tents are permanent structures so you’ll not have to set anything up upon arrival, just unpack and unwind.

Glamping at Ilfracombe Farm Review

Ilfracombe Farm is located in North Devon close to some of Britain’s best beaches. It is a beautifully idyllic location perfectly located as a base should you want to leave the farm and explore Devon’s coastal delights. Just a 5 minute drive away from Ilfracombe’s Tunnels beach and 10 minutes drive from Woolacombe Bay.

The farm has 6 Canvas Frills Lodges on site, each sleeping between 4 – 6 people comfortably, each with its own outside gas powered shower.

Your hosts are the Baker Family, Andrew, Kelly and their 5 children. I have actually known Kelly for many many years as we went to school together so it was a wonderful chance to catch up with her and to finally meet her lovely family.

Andrew is the 5th generation ‘Baker’ to be farming here, and lives on the farm with Kelly and children Alfie, Jake, Evie, Noah and Immie. The farm was in dairy production until 1982, and has since been taking in young beef and dairy cattle for the summer and sheep in for the winter. The family live offsite but only a few minutes down the road, they are usually around to answer any of your queries and questions and will definitely be with you every morning and evening while they feed the animals and you can help them to do this, especially fun is the lamb feeding – who wouldn’t love bottle feeding baby lambs?

What’s onsite?

Onsite there is a lovely sized play barn for children to play inside next to some of the animals. The barn was home to 6 baby lambs which you could bottle feed each morning and evening, 2 pigs and the farm goats too. There is a trampoline, ball pit, ride on toys and a wooden bowling game for the kids to enjoy, as well as an old vintage tractor for the kids to play on. There are hand washing facilities in here too for after you’ve stroked/fed the animals and a comfy sofa for us parents to relax on while the kids burn off some energy.

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This is also home to a small honesty shop, stocked with a few essentials you may have forgotten such as tea, coffee, milk, jars of curry, pasta, cold cans of drinks etc. It only has a few things stocked as there are a few supermarkets locally so it’s easy enough to restock your supplies there. If you want something from the shop you write it down and settle up with cash when you check out.

There are also sheep, chickens and a Shetland pony on this farm too, plus a few ducks also came to visit us while we were there. You are able to check your allocated chicken coop in the morning to check for eggs if you wanted to, the kids loved doing this each morning.

There is also a Pizza oven here and Saturday night is Pizza Night. This is optional and is charged at £10 for adults and £5 for children. You are able to make up your very own pizzas with Kelly and Andrew to enjoy either at the top of the farm on the picnic benches or you could take them back to your tent if you prefer.

Kelly provides all of the fresh ingredients needed to make your very own delicious pizzas and helped the children if they needed any help, then once finished Andrew is in charge of the cooking. It was a very welcomed change to have someone else cooking for me and it was possibly the tastiest pizzas we’ve ever had let alone made ourselves. The Baker children also come up to the farm to help make the pizza’s which Emmy and Harry loved as once they had eaten they could all play together.

Another of the added luxuries is pre-booking a home-cooked meal for your arrival (there is an additional cost for this and you can choose from stew or cottage pie), this is especially good if you will be arriving late or just don’t fancy cooking after a long journey. Kelly will cook your meal for you and bring it to your tent once you arrive.

Our Canvas Frills Lodge

Never have I seen such a clever use of space before, these lodges are deceivingly large inside with room for 3 bedroom areas. There is a master bedroom with a double bed and shelving made out of packing crates, a bedroom with bunk beds and again more packing crate storage where you will find your clean towels and for you to use to store clothes, toiletries and make-up etc, and there is also a cupboard bed containing a double bed. The cupboard bed is just the cutest thing I may have seen, purpose built with storage underneath for all your bags to be hidden away/suitcases stored etc, you climb up 2 little steps to a double bed with closeable doors either side. One set of doors open up into the master bedroom and the others open into the living room area. A perfect little hideaway for the kids to sleep or play in and they can keep the doors open at night if they want to/need to know where you are or close them so you all get a bit more privacy.

Our beds were made up upon arrival, everyone has a pillow and a single duvet each. This is great for if like us you end up bed-hopping during the night – Emmy had a nasty cough so I was in with her every evening, after starting in my own bed that is. This is nothing new as we are forever bed-hopping at home too.

There is a toilet in the tent too which is you’ve ever camped before will be eternally grateful for in the middle of the night, you may, however, want to learn to whistle or sing while you go about your business as everyone can hear you, never a problem for us as the kids are so loud all of the time.

Your fridge is a wooden coolbox which is huge meaning it will store loads, as there is no electricity it is cooled by placing in frozen water bottles which you get from the honesty shop free of charge, swapping them over every morning for frozen ones again. This works surprisingly well and our food stayed cold and fresh even during the heatwave.

The room is completed with a very comfy sofa, table and chairs, candles over the table to light when the sun goes down and your wood-burning stove. The kitchen area is stocked with everything you could possibly need to start your cooking from all the utensils, a cleaning cloth, washing up liquid, bin bag and a tea towel, you just need to provide the ingredients for your meals, there is even a sink with cold running water.

You’ll find instructions on how to use everything within your tent should you be new to camping/glamping and there are firelighters, matches, kindling and logs ready so you can get your wood burner going.

Each lodge has a picnic bench outside for you to use, 2 deck chairs and a BBQ for you to enjoy during your stay, there is also a gas-powered shower just outside your lodge located in a little shed unit.

Settling in

While we unpacked the kids played outside with the neighbour’s children and so set a theme for the whole weekend. There is a car park on the farm so when you park up you then grab a wheelbarrow to take all your belongings to your tent, these can be used for fetching the water for the coolbox and also getting more wood for the wood burner too.

All the children on the farm played happily together, they shared toys and there was laughing and lots of old fashioned outdoor play.

I had packed up enough food for the weekend so once Paul got the fire going I started prepping and cooking our evening meal. For the first night, we had Corned Beef Hash as it is something everything likes and is easy to cook over a campfire – woodburning stove, in this case, I also made a sausage casserole one of the nights. If you are looking for easy food ideas to cook while camping/glamping I have a few different ideas for you here.

It takes around an hour for the stove to get hot enough to cook on so I would advise getting it started before it gets too late otherwise you’ll lose the outdoor light and although there are oil lamps and candles in the tent it is harder to see what you are doing. You will also want to boil up some water in the kettle while you cook so you can do the washing up after.

We purchased some battery lamps to bring with us for the kids to use in the evenings, these acted as night lights and I felt safer for them to use those rather than the candle lamps which were in the bedrooms, and of course, they were needed for in the cupboard bed as you can’t have candles in there.

On our first night, Harry slept on the top bunk and Emmy in the cupboard bed. Harry insisted on testing out all of the beds during our stay.

Once the sun went down the temperature really does drop but the wood burning stove kicks out enough heat to keep you all warm. Paul was in charge of keeping the fire going for us in the evenings and with fleecy onesies and an extra fleecy blanket the kids were pretty warm. We did also bring the kids hot water bottles with us which they did need on one of the colder nights.

Upon waking you may want to crank up the wood burner again as it is rather cold but that also means you can cook breakfast, and a full English tastes amazing cooked up on the stove. The scenery here is amazing for photographs, this isn’t always the same at home but all your valuable moments can be captured with backdrops for those duller days.

Fun on the farm

Every morning and evening we headed off to the barn to feed the lambs with Kelly and Andrew, the kids absolutely loved this, and if I’m honest so did I.

The kids really enjoyed playing with all the other children, kicking around a ball, playing in the play barn and just running around in the fresh air.

We played card games, even introducing the kids to new ones – Happy families was a huge hit, although Harry didn’t really get the idea at all.

One of the things the kids really enjoyed was flying their kites, plain and simple fun.

We all relaxed, unwound and had the best time. If you want to take a closer look around the farm then you can take a look at this video:

Disclaimer: We were guests of Feather Down for this weekend, as always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.