Family Breaks: A Country House Hideout in the New Forest

A crisp, sunny autumn morning, the smell of wood smoke in the air and 3,000 acres of woodland to play in – what a wonderful start to the day. Behind me, my friend is bent industriously over the bio fuel stove and boiled coffee, while outside a couple of children are phoning each other excitedly on proper, old-fashioned Army field telephones linked between toilet, camp HQ and the outdoor hot tub.

We’re staying in the first Country House Hideout TM tents, in the New Forest, and enjoying every minute. The brains behind Center Parcs and Featherdown Farms have done it again and I think they’ve excelled themselves. 

This is Featherdown with knobs on, and pretty eccentric knobs they are too. Large, luxurious safari tents, imported from Holland, will be set up in a variety of large country house estates throughout Britain. They’re supposed to be like those that gentlemen would take with them on their expeditions across Africa in the era of Edwardian explorers. These tents are filled with exploring equipment – a telescope for viewing the star-filled country sky, binoculars for spying on unusual birds or on your friends as they stalk you, a central telephone exchange so those in the tents can keep in constant contact with their field agents – or servants! – on field phones, whether they’re on the grass-covered outdoor toilet or in the open-air hot tub), a wind-up gramophone with plenty of stirring martial music for relaxing to over a cup of cocoa, and various other wonderful toys to keep little and big boys and girls very happy indeed.

All of this Edwardian fun comes wrapped up in some innovative if frankly quite bonkers eco ideas. This is a carbon-neutral holiday – if you feel you might need a small lamp for the evening hours, you get on the bicycles outside and recharge the mobile battery by pedalling.  Feeling a little chilly? Hook up the biofuel stove and put the heavy old kettle on. 

You might also need some fire-making skills, if you’re not going to go hungry or sweaty – the portable outdoor cooking hut needs a fire, as does the hot tub, which has some Professor Branestawm type contraption to bring fire-heated water into a pierced bucket shower, to enjoy au naturel (or not).  Sitting in this huge, luxurious wooden tub watching the trees sway overhead while warmed by the water I’d heated myself was a rare pleasure – though sadly not a lasting one, as I was swarmed by a horde of muddy young boys who found the hot tub probably the most exciting thing they had ever seen.

I enjoyed the care and attention that had been given to every aspect of the tents and surrounding equipment – somehow it was supremely comfortable while being deep in unspoilt woods, and environmentally to boot. The children, for their part, had an absolute ball, doing healthy, outdoorsy but educational things. We can’t wait to go again.