When Lynne and Tim planted willows around a one-acre fruit patch on their Pembrokeshire market garden, their intention was to help
shelter the soft fruit they were growing for the local farmer’s market. What
they didn’t realise is that they were also sowing the seeds for a camping
sanctuary, transforming their home into one rather charming Pembrokeshire campsite. Today, you won’t meet a single camper leaving
Spring Meadow Farm who isn’t singing its praises. They’re easy people to find
too, since they all return again the next year!
Smack in the middle of St Davids
Peninsula, Spring Meadow Farm’s enclosed meadows boast just six grassy
pitches, providing ample space even when fully booked. Stays are of a simple
and natural kind – there are no electrical hook-ups and each pitch has a moveable
wooden picnic table, along with a firepit for that essential evening campfire.
The remaining 12-acres, once a bountiful market garden, are now being allowed to re-wild naturally and are a haven for birds, butterflies and small mammals. And although campervans
are allowed, it’s predominantly tents that pepper the flat camping meadow.
It’s the relaxed approach to
camping here that makes the place so endearing. Guests are welcome to stroll
the margins of neighbouring fields, where unkempt hedges attract goldfinches
and grasshopper warblers, while kids can busy themselves on the outdoor
table-tennis table. Several bright buddleias are also grown on the fringes of the
camping meadows – earning their horticultural nickname as ‘the butterfly bush’
with the numbers they attract. It all gives the place a slightly wild and
rustic feel, hidden in the back of beyond.
Above all else, however, it’s the
location that keeps most of those praise-singing campers returning. Though it
may feel delightfully isolated, Spring Meadow Farm is surrounded by popular beaches
on almost every side. The coast path walk from Porthgain to Abereiddy is the spot to watch the sunset from, head west for surfing and swimming on Whitesands Beach or
drop south to pretty Solva, where the long quayside is ideal for crabbing. The
village overlooks a picturesque, dinghy-dotted estuary that is fed, in part, by
a tiny stream originating back at the campsite itself. So campers here, it
seems, are really just following the natural order: Always bound for the
seaside.