One of the genuine joys of staying at Great Farm Glamping is the wildlife. This isn’t a manicured nature reserve or a guided tour - it’s a working farm with real woodland on the doorstep, and the animals that live here simply get on with their lives whether you’re watching or not. Which, honestly, makes it all the better.

Deer are a common sight, particularly in the early morning. Both roe and the smaller muntjac move through the fields and woody edges at their own pace, largely unbothered by the glamping site nearby. The muntjac in particular seem to have decided we’re no threat whatsoever, and will often graze surprisingly close to the camps if you stay still and keep quiet. In autumn, the rut brings a different kind of spectacle as the sound carries across the fields before you even see anything, and it’s the sort of thing that makes guests stop whatever they’re doing and just listen.

Foxes are regular visitors too. If you’re lucky, you might spot a vixen and her cubs, rolling and tussling in the grass. They’re entertaining company - noisy, chaotic, and completely unaware that anyone is watching them. By midsummer the young ones were bold enough to investigate the fire pit area after dark, which either delights people or sends them back inside sharpish, depending on the guest.

Keep your eyes on the hedgerows and you stand a good chance of spotting a stoat. They move fast and don’t hang around, but they’re one of those animals that once you’ve seen one, you find yourself scanning for them every time you walk the paths. They have a habit of stopping dead, staring straight at you with what looks very much like irritation, and then disappearing into the undergrowth before you’ve had a chance to point them out to whoever is standing next to you.

Squirrels are easier to find as they’re everywhere on the farm and they’re not shy about it. The hazel trees take a battering every autumn and the squirrels treat the whole woodland as their personal obstacle course regardless of the season. If you’re sitting outside and something small and loud drops out of a tree near you, that’ll be them.

The point is, staying here puts you in the middle of all of this without any effort on your part. You don’t need to book a wildlife walk or get up at an unreasonable hour with binoculars. More often than not, the wildlife turns up on its own schedule and you just happen to be there. Sit outside your tent with a coffee in the morning or a drink in the evening, stay reasonably quiet, and the farm will do the rest.

Guests often tell us it’s the thing they talk about most when they get home. Not the comfort of the beds or the views, but the fox that walked past at breakfast, or the deer they hadn’t expected to see from their camp door.

It’s one of those things that’s hard to put a value on until you’re actually here.