Annabel Heseltine discovered a better way of sleeping out when she took her brood of four “glamping” in Shropshire
I am not much of a camper. A scary night spent in a druid’s graveyard as a child with my siblings, a frozen tent with icicles in Mongolia and romantic safaris sleeping under African stars are one thing, but a night in the Shropshire countryside with my four young children was another. Alone – my husband was in bed with flu – and the nanny had vanished, it didn’t sound anything except a lot of hard work. I was chief cook, cleaner and fire maker and I wasn’t sure about the washing facilities, either. Five phone calls later, however, having fussed about the food, the cooking and the loos, I decided to stop being so urban and give poor Rupert Scott a break.
Rupert Scott runs the campsite on his family’s estate, Acton Scott, in Shropshire where I was heading and, as I soon discovered, this was less like camping and more like an African safari. Even the weather was perfect. It was a glamorous stretch of the imagination to call our tent a tent and, what’s more, there were two of them per family. The sleeping-living tent and the so-called Discovery Tent, complete with binoculars, water colours, bird books and a huge telescope with which to admire a clear starry sky. The children were thrilled with their sleeping arrangements; a Little-House-on-The-Prairie-style cubby hole, which somehow squirrelled away three of them, and the hot tub, which was quite literally that, when I worked out how to light the fire underneath it.
Acton Scott has its own story to tell, as this dreamy estate which has been in the same family for a whopping 900 years, has attracted more than its fair share of attention. It was the location for BBC2’s Victorian Farm and Victorian Farm Christmas. Ben Fogle filmed his Escape in Time here, too when two real-life families took up the challenge of being Victorian farmers for a week. 
We, meanwhile followed a barefoot trail through fields full of purple thistles and sheep to explore the farm; a kaleidoscope of red-hued cobbled courtyards, black and white Shire horses, orange Tamworths and yellow baby chickens. My children were enchanted by the very Victorian-looking woman patting butter in her long white pinny and were ecstatic when Rupert offered us a sample of what was un-equivocably the best and creamiest butter, I have ever tasted.
That night, leaving my children safely tucked up in their bunks, I was lucky enough to be invited to one of the other four tents for a delicious chill con carne and to learn more about the eccentric and quirky family who were green way before the term was coined. Tom Scott, Rupert’s father, drives a prototype electric car, and was one of the first to introduce a woodchip-burning boiler for heating. It was his decision, when he inherited the estate, a generation ago, to preserve 19th-century farming skills and return the home farm buildings to their original use.
It’s a tradition his son is continuing with understated style in their latest venture with Country House Hideout, which offers glamorous and very “green”, but stylish camping opportunities for those looking to get off the beaten track.
Our tent has its own peddle bike to create electricity, a beautiful hewn wooden table and a hot tub carved from wood on the estate. Crisp white linen duvets kept me warm in the chilly early morning, even when I was woken by an enthusiastic dawn chorus and a mass of giggling sodden children, who had jumped on me wet from an early morning dip in the tub, approximately two hours before I was ready to get up!
Cooking them a proper eggs-and-bacon-style breakfast, a few hours later, on a very efficient wood stove, I vowed the next time we came, and there would definitely be a next time, that my husband was definitely coming with me.
For more information:
www.actonscott.com
www.countryhousehideout.co.uk
