The team

Elin, Tom, and the field.

A teacher who inherited the field her grandfather farmed and a joiner who has built everything on it, living in the farmhouse at the top of the track all season. Two more help on changeover days, and a hire company in Monmouth does the canoes. The licences and the paperwork are below because a glamping site should be asked for them.

Elin Rowlands

The bookings, the calendar, the hampers, the hens

A teacher in Monmouth for fifteen years before the field her grandfather farmed came to her in 2017, Elin opened the site in 2018 with one bell tent and a shower in the barn. She keeps the availability calendar on this website herself and updates it the day a deposit lands, packs every hamper in the farmhouse kitchen, keeps the hens, and will tell you honestly which pod you want rather than which one is free. The two-night minimum is hers: "One night is a visit."

Tom Rowlands

The fires, the canoes, the walks, the thing that has stopped working

A joiner from Chepstow who built the hut, the cabin, the shower block and the treehouse (the staircase took a winter), Tom lights the fire pits, carries the hampers down the field at half past eight, briefs every canoe trip and leads the walk to the Dyke on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He is the one you knock for when the stove will not draw, and the one who built the new path lights after Lucy's review. The next treehouse is drawn; it is waiting for the oak to agree.

11acres of meadow and oak wood above the Wye, and nobody else on them
4places to sleep, each with its own fire pit and at least fifty metres to the next
2nights minimum, because one night is not a stay, it is a visit
4.9average rating

The rest of us, and the paperwork

Who else, and what to ask any site for.

Changeover days

Bethan and Rhian from the village turn the pods round on Mondays and Fridays between eleven and three: the bedding washed in the farmhouse, the canvas brushed, the stoves cleaned and laid, and a jar of flowers from the meadow on the table.

The canoes

A hire company in Monmouth that has run the Wye for thirty years: their boats, their buoyancy aids, their briefing and their minibus, and their call on whether the river is up. We book them and they deliver to our beach.

The paperwork

A site licence from the county council for four units; the treehouse signed off by a structural engineer and inspected every spring; gas certificates for the shower block and the cabin; the spring water tested each season; and £5 million public liability.

Where the money goes

The tent paid for the shower block; the hut paid for the cabin; the cabin paid for the treehouse; the treehouse is paying for the next one. We are not on the booking sites, so the fifteen per cent they would take is in the price as the first basket of wood and no fees.

A fire pit burning on a wooden deck in a meadow at dusk, two camp chairs and a lantern beside it, a bell tent glowing behind and a wooded valley fading into blue

The field

Sheep until 2016, one bell tent in 2018, a treehouse in 2022.

Elin's grandfather grazed sheep on it for forty years and let the bottom go to meadow when his knees went. It came to her in 2017 with the farmhouse, a leaking barn and a view she had been looking at since she was four. The first summer was one bell tent and a shower in the barn; Tom built the hut that winter, the cabin the next, and the treehouse over the winter of 2021, which is why the staircase is the best thing on the site. "If people cannot see the field is cared for, they will not believe the beds are."

Finding the track

Pick the pod, pick the nights, and see every one of them priced.

The availability page shows every night of the season for every pod, taken or free, and quotes a stay with the price for each night. Then one form books it; Elin replies within two hours, 8am to 8pm, and a deposit of a night holds it.

Check availability The four pods