Hedonethical Holidays: Sopley Farm Wigwam, Dorset

This is Part II of the Hedonethical Holidays post, you can click here to go to Part I. We stayed in a wigwam / tipi on Sopley Farm in Dorset. Truly this is the other end of the price scale, with the tipi and pitch costing just £40 a night for two of us; the usual cost is £50 per night, however I believe we were given a discount due to there being just two people. The tipi could, technically, sleep six; for comfort, I wouldn't recommend going above four though.

Glamping this is not. There are definitely both positives and negatives to this sort of camping holiday, especially if you find yourself battling inclement weather as we did; however, if you are a relatively flexible person and inclined to make the best of things, then you'll have an absolutely marvellous time.

Here are the main ethical positives:

1. Again, the location, in the Uk.
2. No electricity, heating or hot water, so you can't use (or overuse) any!
3. If the weather is dry you can gather your own wood from the forest floor for the fire.
4. Self-catering, so you're less likely to contribute to food and energy wastage.
5. Few harsh cleaning products are likely to have been used at the site.
6. Local free range eggs, organic fruit and vegetables are available from the Pick Your Own farm or shop. The Barn Owl farm shop just down the road also sells locally reared meat (you can see the pigs and cows for yourself) and organic tinned produce such as beans and tomatoes.
7. Items like towels, soap and other toiletries are all bring-your-own, so you won't be using unneccessary miniature bottles, new hand soaps or getting your towels boil washed every day.

And the main hedonistic ones:

1. No pitching and dismantling your own tent and the tipi is much bigger than all but the most expensive tents, you can easily walk around standing inside. 
2. Parking right next to the pitch, with some gravel on the ground to prevent sinking.
3. Absolutely gorgeous surroundings with plenty of wildlife and, in the right weather, stunning sunsets. While we were there we saw (or heard) rabbits, squirrels, barn owls, tawny owls, a kingfisher, ducks, geese, bats and suspected badgers and hedgehogs. There are also domestic pigs, cows and deer to see locally.
4. Eating (and drinking) round an open fire, a true pleasure. Especially a jacket potato cooked in foil. And noone says that you can't bring a bottle of champagne if you want to!
   Using a combination of the fire and a small gas stove we were able to eat very well, including lentil dal, pasta, mixed bean casserole and fresh raspberry compote for toasted crumpets.
5. Little "beaches" around the lake, ostensibly for anglers to fish from, but we took one over for playing mah jong and it was lovely.
6. The Woolpack pub is a short way away. Be warned though, the kitchens don't open until 6pm. They allowed us to charge our mobile phones for £1, although I don't think this is a regular request.
7. The fruit and veg from the farm are delicious and the super fresh bantam and duck eggs are among the best I've tasted.
8. The farmer who owns the pitch also runs a deer safari which is absolutely fantastic.
9. Peace and quiet - mostly. Outside of the sounds of wildlife, you may occasionally be disturbed by a family out on a walk, a couple of chatty anglers or (around this time of year) the ongoing drone of a combine harvester in the distance.
10. For a pitch near an open body of water there were very few mosquitos.
11. JCBs, John Deeres and various other tractors and combine harvesters. If you like that sort of thing. There's also a tank somewhere, but we didn't get to see it.

 And now for the negatives, ethical first:

1.  You will probably use quite a lot of batteries to light the tipi at night, you can recycle them though.
2. A gas stove is a must, but of course this does leave the empty cannisters to dispose of.
3. If you buy logs and kindling for the fire which, if it is wet, you will have to, the chances are that what you buy won't be sustainable wood - although again, they might be, but it's very hard to tell if the sacks aren't labelled.

And the hedonistic negatives:

1.  It is damp and it can be cold. If you haven't taken enough lights, it will also be dark. A bit of advice: load the car up with sleeping bags, blankets, jumpers, socks, lanterns and torches. I'd recommend at least one wind-up torch. There were two chinese lanterns in the tipi, which gave off a lovely yellow glow, but they ate up AAA batteries at the rate of 2 batteries for about 2 hours.
2. The loo is a little walk away from the tipi, you're unlikely to want to make that trip on your own in the middle of the night. 
3. There are no showers, in fact no hot water at all. We were stoic enough to wash in cold water, if you aren't then it's a trip to the local leisure centre for you.
4. If you are a really rubbish cook then you're stuck, otherwise the goodness of your meals are down to what you've brought and whether you can turn them into something edible.
5. If it really rains, for example like the thunderstorm we had on the last night, then the tipi will leak through the ventilation gap at the top. Take a brolly to pop over your stuff and make sure you have plenty of blankets to absorb the moist air before it reaches your sleeping bag.

In order to ensure a good time, here are a few of the items that we were the most grateful we'd brought with us:

• Camping gas stove and spare cannisters. Saucepan, frying pan, kettle, easy-clean plates, cutlery, glasses and mugs.
• Wind-up storm lantern
• Torches, mp3 player and spare batteries
• Dry kindling and some old newspaper
• A rug for the middle of the tipi
• A camp bed to raise you off the damp and draughty floor. Failing that make sure you take a waterproof foam ground mat, you'll be glad you did.
• Spare loo roll, bin bags, compostable food waste bags, a pan scourer, tin foil and kitchen roll.
• A 15 litre water bottle. The drinking water tap is a fair march from the tipi, you'll need water onsite.
• Socks. Lots and lots of clean, dry socks.
• Wellies and waterproof flip-flops
• Wet wipes
• A sealable cool bag, so you can keep some items like cheese or butter at the camp.
• A plastic ground sheet and/or tarpaulin... for sitting on outside.
• Salt, pepper, oil, sugar, bay leaves, oregano and chilli flakes.
• A deck of cards
• Cameras
• Many bottles of wine!
  

Hedonethical Holidays: The Montagu Arms, Beaulieu (and Terrace Restaurant)

Anyone who follows this blog regularly (and I know from the stats page that it's not just my imagination, there are a few of you!) will have noticed there's been a bit of slacking going on this month.

This is because I went on holiday. As we're trying to live with hedonethics in mind, we extended these principles to our holiday this year. I'm not going to lie, it did "help" that the boiler packed up a few months ago: replacing it ate all the savings we'd put together for a trip to Italy. Hey-ho we said and set our sights on the new forest.

I've got two Hedonethical Holiday posts to make, at each end of the price scale - the first week is at a high class hotel, the second one, camping in a "tipi" in Dorset. This post is about the hotel we stayed at during the first week. Photographs are at the bottom.

We stayed at The Montagu Arms, in Beaulieu (pronounced B'yoo-lee). Some things about this hotel were spectacular from a hedonethicists point of view, particularly the michelin starred restaurant headed by chef Matthew Tomkinson. Other things made me wonder why they hadn't done them, such as the lack of that now familiar little card, which usually informs guests that they should put their towels in the bath if they want them changed, or leave them on the rack if they will use them again.

So, here are the main ethical positives:

1. The obvious: their location in the uk. 
2. There are 28 healthy, free range chickens onsite supplying the hotel's eggs, which you can visit if you love chickens as I do, puckuuuuck! 
3. They compost the hotel food waste. 
4. They are reclaiming waste ground to create wildlife-friendly organic gardens. 
5. They source some of their ingredients from their own organic kitchen gardens. 
6. Wherever possible they use local meat and fish. 
7. They bottle chilled and filtered tap water, rather than serving imported products. They carbonate it for you if you request sparkling. 
8. There's a lot of happy wildlife around - there were loads of fat birds in the garden, along with bees and butterflies. 
9. There is sustainable fish such as gurnard on the menu. 
10. The menu makes the most of seasonal produce. 
11. Double glazing has been installed behind the traditional windows, to conserve energy. 
12. The hotel's newspaper of choice is The Independent, which is available for free.

And the main hedonistic ones:

1. Sumptuous surroundings with a lovely victorian feel. wood panelling, grandfather clocks, gorgeous wallpaper, interesting paintings and historical artefacts, good weight linens, soft towels, moulton brown and organic toiletries, wooden loo seats etc.
2. Incredibly good food. 
3. Beautiful, well-kept garden with a fountain and fat, friendly little wild birds.
4. Fabulous service and extremely friendly staff, these guys are great and will tailor their approach to your reactions: be informal and so will they (without compromising service), be formal and they will follow suit. The night porter stays awake all night, ready to provide you with wines, spirits, tea, coffee or sandwiches at any hour.
5. Complimentary coffee or tea and a newspaper every morning.
6. They have a truly huge cheese selection, some cheeses I'd never even heard of before.
7. There are nice smoking areas provided at both the front and back of the hotel.
8. The pub next door, Monty's, serves excellent food, local beers and is very comfy with a pool table, darts boards and other games available from behind the bar on request.
9. The sommelier is a lovely young man, just into the job and very keen to share his knowledge and funny stories if you ask him. I wouldn't say the cellar is extensive (I've seen the wine list at the Ritz), but there are a lot of choices on there.
10. There are a wide selection of teas, including fresh mint, gunpowder and russian caravan. The coffee is also very good.
11. When we checked out, the receptionist handed us a paper bag containing "goodbye" water and apples for the road. When we got to our car, we discovered a note letting us know that our windscreen had been washed in advance of our homeward journey.

There are still some ethical items that I hope they will rectify over time:

1. There's no option for you to retain your towels for more than one night.
2. I didn't see evidence of them using energy saving light bulbs, however I could be wrong - I know there are energy efficient bulbs for sale that look like ordinary bulbs.
3. I suspect that cleaning and laundry products are not going to be eco-friendly. If a hotel paid the extra for these products, they'd probably tell us about it.

And a few hedonistic ones:

1. A cup of tea in your room costs £8.95, that's £4.95 for the tea and £5 to deliver it. However, you can get around this by requesting a hospitality tray which makes sense if, like us, you get a suite with a living room and want to spend some time in there.
2. The shower in our suite was brilliant. The shower in our second room, a four-poster superior room, was less excellent. Plumming isn't standard across the hotel.
3. You do need to dress up a bit for dinner, which is fair enough but be warned that it has to be done even if you don't feel like it - a proper dinner from the restaurant menu isn't available in your room.
4. The lounge is likely to be hushed and make you whisper. You get used to this atmosphere just in time to be disturbed by a loud, wealthy family or obnoxious twit making a big fuss of themselves. The hotel can't do much about that, but at least they try.
5. We didn't get bedside tables in the suite, although we did in the superior double.

We got the 3-nights-for-2 package, which included a bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne, a cream tea, breakfast and dinner in the michelin starred restaurant. We opted to stay an extra day because we liked it so much and they were very accomodating; our request was handled directly by the manager as soon as it became apparent our current suite wouldn't be available.

The local area offers, by way of attractions, a very sweet community garden, Palace House and grounds, Buckler's Hard (Nelson's ship building yard) which is reached by a beautiful 2 mile walk along the river, Exbury Gardens, the otter and wildlife sanctuary, Milton-on-sea shingle beach with a view of the Isle of Wight, Highcliffe beach and Lymington high street, which has proper charity shops selling good items at an affordable price.