A Suffolk sojourn

35

Each year we try and get away for at least one glamping trip. This year for various reasons we left it a bit late to book something and so it was only about two months ago that we booked a little getaway to the countryside. Although we often end up glamping somewhere in the region of the English/Welsh border, our options were a bit more limited this time as we were booking relatively last minute for during the school holidays. As a result we ended up landing on somewhere we might not ordinarily have considered – the Green Fairground Wagon on Coppins Farm.

Our preference when glamping is to go rally rural. We get enough of people, amenities and traffic in London, so we like to go for the complete opposite when it comes to breaks. As a result we generally try to pick locations where we are the only cabin/hut/treehouse on site or at least where we are well away from others on the same site.

With two other wagons on site and with the site being right on a road, I’m not going to lie, I was a little sceptical about whether the Green Fairground Wagon and Coppins Farm would be a site for us. But, I’m not going to lie, the Canopy and Stars website (our forever go-to for glamping breaks) lured me in with the suggestion that the site was visited nightly by badgers. The badgers clinched it.

It turns out that my slight reservations were entirely unjustified. Although Coppins Farm is just a a fifteen minute drive from nearby Sudbury and its amenities (including a Waitrose), it’s right in the middle of the countryside. The roads leading to Alphamstone, where Coppins Farm is located, are often single track roads and Alphamstone itself is home to a handful of farms and beautiful little houses. Lots of houses in the area are your typical chocolate box, English country homes complete with thatched roofs. It’s all very picturesque and quaint.

And yes the Green Fairground Wagon is close to a road but the place is so tucked away and private, and the road is so quiet that, other than the odd car or pair of cyclists, we could have been a million miles away from civilisation.

When you’re there you are just surrounded by greenery (including blackberry brambles heavy with fruit) and we were happy in our own little bubble. In fact, the only neighbours during our time were the horses that lived in the field at the end of ours and, of course, the nightly badgers who came and hoovered up the peanuts we left them.

By day we ate, read (I’m currently reading Westwood (affiliate link), a novel set in war-time London by Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort Farm), stretched out in the sun on a picnic blanket and went for walks nearby. Our days were punctuated only by the sound of wood pigeons and what was, according to my Merlin Bird IP app, a spotted flycatcher – certainly a change from our noisy London parakeets.

The countryside surrounding Coppins Farm is gorgeous. Each day we donned our walking boots and took public footpaths through woodland and meadows where butterflies fluttered at our feet and by our sides. Although at one point in a walk we did find ourselves defeated by chest-high ferns and nettles whose summer growth had overtaken the public footpath, but we rerouted and found an alternative option that took us across meadows instead.

We were lucky to have perfect August weather while we were there but we could easily imagine that the whole area is also gorgeous on a crisp autumn or frosty winter morning, although those roads might be less pleasant on an icy day…

In addition to hanging out at our wagon, we also headed out for a little day trip based on one of our favourite TV shows – Detectorists. Because, if you’re in Detectorists country, why wouldn’t you take advantage? Watch this space for more on that.

By night we drank aperitifs – old fashioned and negroni spritzes – and cooked dinner in the small but well-kitted out kitchen. We ate dinner and watched as the sun sink over the trees to the West before what was maybe the most beautiful full moon we’ve ever seen rose in the East.

We’d hoped to see a sky full of stars but ended up thwarted, not by artificial light pollution, but by the moonlight.

After dinner each night we settled in for a couple of games of cards while listening to the Proms on the radio. As blue hour turned inky black we crept up onto the bed, switching off all the lights inside but leaving the outside light on, and waited quietly.

Each night, anywhere between 9.30pm and 11pm a badger would suddenly and silently appear on the grass in front of the wagon and we would sit and watch as it pootled around the grass and on the decking below us sniffing out the peanuts we had left out. Most nights it was later joined by another badger and we watched the two of them largely ignore each other in favour of looking for peanuts. Terrible phone picture and video below:

My husband is already talking about when, not if, we will return.