Hideaway Camping

It takes an imaginative eye to create a place as special as Hideaway Camping, a remote, aptly named 24-acre campsite at the end of a private track in rural Devon. What to you and I may appear a rag-taggle of interwoven branches and overgrown trees, to Amy Rogers was the prime setting for a fairy glade,with tiny fairy doors, secret grottos and an enticing, natural entrance woven out of living willow trees. A tall cluster of young birches? Why that should become a hammock garden, of course. And those rocks? Well, roll them out, winch them up and we have our very own miniature Stonehenge, a ‘Hideaway Henge’ around the campfire.

It’s this synergy between the campsite owners’ creative ideas and the varied wilderness of the setting that makes Hideaway such a perfect spot. Great mature trees encircle the field, nature trails snake among the forest and the pond is left serene, untouched and wild. At its heart, of course, is the large, flat camping meadow itself, with heaps of space for pitching your tent and for little ones to run wild. A covered cabin offers plenty of facilities – showers, impressive throne-like loos, a shared kitchen area – and there’s a rainy day space with books, board games and the like. Such things also inject an extra social element to the place. Children will have made friends for life here by the end of day one – even if some of them happen to be fairies or the four gregarious kune kune pigs.

The well-spaced out grass camping pitches are accompanied by a handful of quirky glamping options that continue the creative trend. There’s a romantic wooden shepherd’s hut, a bow top gypsy caravan with an accompanying kitchen, a classic American Airstream trailer that was painstakingly restored over several years, and a pair of moulded igloos; dome-shaped cocoons with bubble windows, proper beds and soft furnishings. All have their own unique charm but share in the general vibe of the campsite – chilled out, carefree and condusive to nights beside a campfire.

Should you make your way along the farm track and back to the outside world, there’s ample opportunity to discover the rest of Devon. A convenient A-road whips you south to Dartmoor, which is less than 10 minute’s away by car, or, in the opposite direction, to Bude and the North Cornwall coast. And if the everyday hardships of ice-cream on the beach, walks in the moors and waterfall wandering in nearby Lydford Gorge leave you feeling rundown, you can even return to massage therapies and herbal treatments back at camp. Who knew that the official home of relaxation was hidden down a half-mile lane in rural Devon?