Fancy this. A farm that’s like its own little
village, with its own phone box and genuine Victorian red postbox; with room
for just a couple of tents and a few extra guests. Actually there’s room for
hundreds of tents in Botelet’s 300 acres, but it’s a working farm and the
owners want to keep the camping small and special. The two tent pitches change
with the season, based on where the cows are grazing, how high the grass is,
and a number of other random factors, like what’s in the tea leaves that
morning. It all means that if you come here every year for the rest of your
camping days the chances are you’d never pitch in the same place twice.
Beyond these ever changing emplacements,
though, Botelet farm is also home to a pair of magnificent yurts, one in the field
out front and the other in a separate meadow above the farm. More unfazed by
the movements of the cattle and the migration of the birds, these structures
reside in their spots all season, both with excellent views across the rolling
valley beyond. Inside, the furnishings are simple and rustic but more than
adequate, while both have wood-burning stoves in their centre, to warm those
chilly nights and boil the kettle for your morning cuppa.
Keeping to the agricultural feel, features around
Botelet have been ingeniously converted to give a camping practicality to the
working farm. A cattle trough has been altered to work as a large, long sink
for washing up and, inside one of the old farm cottages, a space has been
created for owner Tia to offer therapeutic massage treatments. Not that it’s her
go-to spot. When the weather permits, the massage couch, with heated under
blanket, is taken outside for alfresco massages in the sun and sometimes even
inside the yurts themselves.
Offsite, trails lead around the perimeter of
the fields and into the adjacent woodland, while a ten-minute walk takes you to
Bury Down Hill Fort, a Neolithic structure with panoramic views across the
Cornish countryside. Beneath, the farm meadows spread, peppered by cows grazing and
no doubt wondering where they’ll be moving to next. Masters of the meadows, it’s
still them who call the shots.