Staycation with Style: Feather Down at Lunsford Farm, Sussex

Farm Stay or Glamping? Both Please! As Junior checked in for a few nights of fresh air, cute farm animals and coastal walks to review Feather Down Lunsford Farm

Lunsford Farm: Check In

Long before glamping became the holiday buzzword, Feather Down have been pioneering luxury camping. They currently have 32 sites dotted across the country, all with a big emphasis on connecting with nature without sacrificing creature comforts.

Lunsford Farm in East Sussex stood out due to its close proximity to London (we took a train to Tree Oaks station, then a short pre-booked taxi to the farm) and its combination of scenic countryside and seaside.

Lunsford Farm: The Tents

It’s all about location, location, location at Lunsford Farm as the four safari style tents are set on a hill, taking in beautiful vistas of rolling meadows filled with wild flowers and sheep, leading down to the sea. The glamp site is incredibly family-friendly as it’s enclosed in a paddock and your fellow glampers are generally families, providing readymade play-friends onsite.

Each tent also has an outdoor BBQ ready to fire up, with meats and coals available from the onsite honesty shop, which is surprisingly well stocked. If you brought your own fruit, vegetables and bread, you could easily just eat from the honesty shop or alternatively there’s a small supermarket just a short drive away.

Inside the spacious canvas lodges, which sleep up to six people, there’s wooden floorboards, comfy beds including bunk beds and a box bed that’s perfect for kids who are prone to rolling out, a toasty wood fired stove for cooking and warming up the tent, a kitchen area with cooking utensils and a private flushing toilet. The communal showers and farm shop is a five-minute walk away down the country lane. Cots and high chairs can also be pre-booked and you’ll also get a starter pack at check in, with candles, oil lamps and firelighters.

GOOD TO KNOW: There’s no electricity or WiFi at Lunsford Farm so it’s a chance for a blissful digital detox, with evenings lit by cozy candlelight. As this is glamping, it gets nippy in the evenings, although the thick duvets help to keep things snug as night falls. And don’t forget to pack a torch, insect spray and extra layers to make the most of the alfresco evenings.

Lunsford Farm: What to do

As a working farm, there are plenty of animal activities happening right on your doorstep to keep kids entertained. Farmer Andrew is a wealth of knowledge and gives weekly farm tours or is happy to stop and chat with families about the animals. He’ll light up the outdoor oven for weekly pizza nights and children can also book in for fishing lessons using the farm’s picturesque lake.

The 200-acre farm is home to fields of cows, a horse and flocks of woolly sheep, which act as your own private alarm clock in the mornings! If you’re lucky enough to coincide your visit with lambing season, expect to meet some seriously adorable new-borns. There’s also an area for the free-range chickens and a hen house where glamping guests can help themselves to the freshly laid eggs each day. Farmer Andrew has won all sorts of awards for his sustainable farming practices and you can see how content the animals are – his sheep actually look like they’re smiling!

Farm life on Lunsford Farm offers its own gentle rhythms and it’s this slower pace of life that’s one of the major attractions of glamping here. A long weekend could easily be spent without leaving the farm.

However, if you did want to venture out, the farm is also ideally positioned for a beach visit, with the local coastal stretch a 20-minute walk through the fields. For a beach with a little more action, head to Camber Sands which is around a 30 minute drive away. Here, kids can run wild in the sand dunes, paddle in the shallow waters and devour fish and chips on the beach. Rye and Hastings are also a short drive away for daytrips.

Lunsford Farm: Why it’s Great for Family Glamping

It’s Feather Down Lunsford Farm’s location; set on a friendly farm next to the coast that makes this a real hidden gem for a family glamping trip. As the site is safely fenced off, children can run as free-range as the chickens, which offered our urban kids a much-needed dose of freedom and reconnection with nature.