Mabon is a pagan holiday in the Wheel of the Year, falling on the Autumn equinox. The Autumn equinox is when there is equal light and dark in the day and it falls between 20th and 22nd September depending on the year. As such Mabon symbolises balance. It is also a harvest festival, giving thanks for the fruits of the earth as the last of the harvests are brought home. 

Hooray. We’ve scored a hat-trick! Our glamping site has been awarded Gold by Visit England for the third year in a row. In her assessment report, the assessor Teresa said that:

“Blackdown Yurts continue to present to a high standard and provide a very comfortable standard of accommodation. 

“The yurts are set amongst beautiful surrounding countryside and enjoy a peaceful outlook across the fields. Internally, they are colourful and neatly arranged to provide guest comfort.

“The well arranged outdoor space provides an excellent al fresco living area for the warmer days and the fire pits add to guest comfort for the cooler evenings.

“The site is well maintained and following this year’s assessment visit maintains the requirements of the Quality Assessed Glamping Scheme. The Gold Award is also retained and is very well deserved.”

We are chuffed to bits and we hope you come and see for yourself why we deserve Gold for yourself very soon. 

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Tiverton is the district town of Mid-Devon and is an attractive market town on the banks of the River Exe. There is plenty to see and do, especially this year with a swan trail around the town to get you oriented and the 50th anniversary celebrations of the fabulous horse drawn barge on the gorgeous Grand Western Canal.

Here are our Tiverton Top Ten to inspire you: 

1. The Flock That Rock
Search for ceramic swans decorated by local artists all over town - find them all and get a 10% discount on painting your own ceramic swan at a local pottery painting place.

Visit The Flock That Rock's webpage

On 21st March we will have lived here in Mid-Devon running Blackdown Yurts and Halsbeer Farm holiday cottages for eight whole years. It's the longest Mark and I have ever lived anywhere. I can't believe how quickly time has flown. And I really can't believe that the start of the Covid pandemic was four years ago - right in the middle of that time. Crazy! 

During the last eight years we've totally remodelled the site with new decks, new cladding on Badger and Woodpecker, bringing Buzzard down from the top of Yonder Hill into the yurt field on its own raised deck, new camp kitchens, new fire pits, new beds, new bathrooms, new front to the barn, new sofas. 

Of course we are really proud that our efforts have been recognised along the way with awards from Visit Devon and Visit England, including two Bronzes in the Glamping category of the Devon Tourism Awards, a commendation in the SouthWest England tourism excellence awards, a Rose award and Gold accreditation from Visit England. Our latest accolade is a Bronze award from Green Tourism. 

We open for the season one week tomorrow on Good Friday 29th April. We hope to see you really soon back at Blackdown Yurts. The season runs til the end of September. 

​Celebrate English Tourism Week this week by booking your next stay and supporting English businesses such as ours and all the attractions and places to eat nearby. 

If you can't visit on exactly those dates or we don't have availability, the moon appears full a day or two either side. 
​

If you'd like to get even deeper in touch with your elemental nature, book onto a day retreat this Spring with the wonderful Elle from Serendipity, Mind, Body, Soul. Based in nearby Sheldon, Elle is a sacred celebrant and is running day retreats with another celebrant Kathy in nearby Broadhembury* on three dates during our open season. ​​

We have availability in the yurts on the weekend of 12/13 April and 14/15 June. Book onto a day retreat with Elle and receive a code to get £35 off your two night stay at Blackdown Yurts on either of those weekends**. 

The yurts are already fully booked on the weekend of Saturday 25th May, however we do still have availability for half term in three of our holiday cottages at the other side of the farm. Book a day retreat with Elle for Saturday 25th May and receive a code for £35 off a stay in one of our cottages at Halsbeer Farm for half term week - available for seven nights from Friday 24th May. 

​*Broadhembury Village Hall is about 15 minute's drive away from Blackdown Yurts. You will need to make your own way there. 

**Please note only one discount can be used per accommodation unit, not per person.

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of spending the afternoon in the stunning tithe barn at Great Fosters Hotel in Egham in Surrey along with 99 other accommodation providers from across the length and breadth of England to be presented with a 2023 VisitEngland Recognition of Service Excellence "ROSE" Award.

Blackdown Yurts was nominated for the award by Teresa, our VisitEngland assessor who has carried out our glamping accreditation visit for the last two years (for which we achieved Gold by the way!). The ROSE Awards "recognise accommodation businesses which go the extra mile for their guests".

A question from one of our yurt guests this week got me to thinking about what our visitors can do if it’s wet on your holiday. We are lucky in having the barn as a refuge for guests to enjoy whatever the weather - with sofas, a wood-burning stove, cooking facilities and a large dining table - it's a lovely place to while away a few hours reading and playing games while rain patters on the tin roof. But if you want to get out and about when it's raining where should you go? Read on to find out...

A big one of course is Exeter, Devon's historic cathedral city, which is surprisingly close being only one junction down the M5 from Cullompton. It has numerous attractions and lots of shops and restaurants. A few highlights include:

The RAMM (Royal Albert Memorial Museum) is an excellent indoor option with fascinating free galleries and temporary exhibitions that you may have to pay extra for. It's also close to some of Exeter's best and varied eateries.

Exeter Cathedral is also nearby and well worth a visit. The underground passages are interesting and most definitely out of the rain being beneath the streets. They are accessed via an entrance on Paris Street next to Next at the John Lewis end of town.

To get active while it's raining look no further than Clip and Climb, Exeter's indoor climbing centre down in the Quay area. It claims to be the Southwest's largest indoor climbing centre. There are also some great restaurants and antique places to explore in the Quay along with a new yarn shop Lauren Aston Designs run by a friend of ours where you can stock up on your quality colourful knitting yarn and knitting patterns before returning to your yurt or the barn to knit the rain away. 

We are very nearly half way through our open season of our glamping site this year! How did that happen? June has simply flown by in a haze of beautiful sunshine and warmth. 

We are fully booked in our Devon yurts this weekend but we have a smattering of availability next week and over the following two weekends. Starting from £80 per night. Perfect for a short stay getaway before school is out for Summer.

Woodpecker (sleeps 6) is available for two, Willow (sleeps 4) for three and Buzzard (sleeps 6) for four nights all from Monday 3rd July.

​Badger (sleeps 6) is available from Thursday 6th July for a minimum of two nights and up to eight nights including over next weekend.

Willow and Woodpecker are both available on the weekend of 14th July and we have some midweek availability either side too.

Once the summer holidays start availability is more limited but we do have Woodpecker for four nights from 24th July and Willow is available for four nights from 31st July. Then nothing until 14th August.

Live availability calendars are available on each individual yurt page or take a look on the Book Now page where you can search availability. 

Alongside our four fully equipped Mongolian yurts we have a spacious communal barn with dining, seating and cooking areas. Next door are private bathrooms for each yurt with hot showers and flushing toilets. Never fear for middle of the night wees you don't have to venture far from the yurt as each has a composting toilet and urinal adjacent along with its very own camp kitchen and fire seating area. 

We generously provide wood, kindling, firelighters, matches and a starter pack of charcoal for the kettle BBQ. We even provide marshmallows for toasting. Come and check out our little piece of heaven in Devon for yourself.

Our beautiful fields and meadows are teeming with wildlife including barn owls, kestrels, deer, butterflies, birds and bats. Come and relax in nature a while. Bat detectors available to borrow on request, if Katie is around she may be able to lead a bat walk for you. Do ask or put a note on expressing your interest when you book. 

​April and May are such beautiful months to visit the Blackdown Hills and Devon. With wild garlic and bluebells flowering, birds singing and the sun getting warmer by the day. 

We have one stay remaining in the May half term, in Willow which sleeps 4, from Monday 29th May for four nights. Availability is fairly good throughout June and the first half of July but is becoming patchy during the Summer holidays. ​

This is still one of my all-time favourite photos that Mark has taken here at Blackdown Yurts. The majesty of the Milky Way coursing down the centre, Mars at far left and a shooting star at centre right, with a group of happy glampers enjoying the campfire next to their yurt. 'Happy days', or rather 'happy nights'. 

At the end of last year I attended a meeting where representatives of the Exmoor Dark Skies Project and the UK Dark Skies Partnership spoke about the importance of keeping our landscapes as free as possible of light pollution. It's so important to avoid excessive lighting as it can harm wildlife and prevent us from seeing the stars, never mind the waste of money and energy and the harmful contribution that makes to climate change.

We are lucky that our yurts nestle in a dark valley on the edge of the Blackdown Hills AONB with very little light spill. We have been careful not to introduce a lot of lighting on site, instead relying on guests to use torches and lanterns to find their way around. We have a lot of nocturnal wildlife, which you could spot (or hear) on your holiday including numerous species of bats, barn and tawny owls, and foxes. 

Read on to find out five ways you can embrace your dark side this year...

We watched such a fantastic movie last weekend and it inspired me to write a list of the zoos and wildlife parks that you can visit while on holiday in the region.

It was only at the end of We Bought a Zoo*, which stars Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, that I discovered it was inspired by real-life events at Dartmoor Zoo here in Devon rather than being a story from the USA where the film is set. We've not visited Dartmoor Zoo ourselves yet, but it is now firmly on the list for this year. 

Visiting a zoo is a fantastic family day out while on holiday and one of the benefits of Blackdown Yurts being located in Mid-Devon is that you can go in pretty much any direction to find one. I've listed these in order of distance to reach them. Some are large, some are tiny, all are fascinating places to visit so here goes: 

One of our favourite local places to visit, previously called Wildwood Escot, recently rebranded as Wildwood Devon. With a focus on rewilding and hopefully eventually reintroducing species that used to be native back the UK, Wildwood has wolves, bears, otters, wild boar and more set within a wooded area which is part of the Escot Park estate. They put on bird of prey flying demonstrations and we had the most magical encounter with a red squirrel once in their walk through enclosure.

What else is there? There is lots to see besides the animals including a maze, climbing wall, reconstruction of an Anglo Saxon village and bookable activities at the Devon Activity Centre including segway, quad biking, clay shooting, archery, axe throwing and more. You must book ahead to avoid disappointment. You can spend a whole day out here, and there is a cafe in the old stable block. 

I don't know about you but I am so over camping - the packing, the unpacking, the uncomfortable beds. Give me glamping any day. I thought it would be handy to highlight just what we provide in the yurts and their kitchens so you know what you don't have to bring with you and conversely what you do!  

Our yurts have proper beds with proper mattresses and all bed linen plus blankets provided. You need to bring towels for showers although we do provide one hand towel per bathroom in the barn for your convenience. The yurts have nightlight candles, lanterns and fairy lights but we recommend you bring your own torch for nighttime excursions.

We and our guests have been enjoying seeing a barn owl hunting in the fields adjacent to the main yurt field. It just goes to show that leaving the grass unmown and ungrazed has allowed a variety of wildflowers and grasses to grow which in turn are providing cover and food for a variety of small mammals which the barn owls are hunting to feed their young. ​

As well as the barn owl we've had swallows nesting above the yurt bathrooms in the barn and we've seen fox cubs playing on the driveway at the other end of the farm. With the coming of summer we will hopefully see more butterflies in the meadow maze and Devon banks.

Guests have started enjoying learning about bats again and using bat detectors with Katie on bat walks. Do please ask if you are interested in this - if Katie isn't about she can always lend you a bat detector to have a go at listening yourself. 

Plus our colouring sheets are back in the yurts for our younger visitors to enjoy. ​Read on for more suggestions of how you can go wild in June plus a discount code on stays. 

​GOLD!
​
Each year we have a Glamping accreditation assessment for our yurts in Devon from Visit England and we've just had the result of our most recent one that took place at the end of last month.

We've scored 86% (1% up on our last assessment in October 2020, and 3% up on the previous one in May 2019) and for the first time have been awarded GOLD. This is a fantastic endorsement of the quality of our offering here at Blackdown Yurts. 

To celebrate our win we have released two new drone videos of our site here on the edge of Mid-Devon's beautiful Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We think they show exactly why people love to come and relax in our green and pleasant land surrounded by fresh air, space and nature. A perfect holiday to get away from it all. 

Yesterday my online yoga teacher Gillie had us channelling a bear during our half hour morning class. (I know, bear with me!) Gillie’s sessions are inspired by nature and the elements and she asked us to imagine we were in a cosy den with a fire burning and that our bodies were soft like marshmallows. What a delicious image! Of course I imagined I was in a cosy yurt with the wood-burner going, sheepskin rugs on the floor and twinkly lights all around, nestled beneath the dark night sky. Gillie's class incorporated self-bear hugs (or hugging a cuddly toy), rolling around like a bear on the floor, bear crawling and slowing down - did you know that during hibernation bear's reduce their breathing rate to just once every 45 seconds!  How cool is that?! 

After the class Gillie shared an online quiz to find your spirit animal and serendipitously mine came out as the bear. Symbolic of strength and confidence, standing against adversity, healing, solitude, quiet and rest all of which sounds great right now and ties in with my intentions of grounding, hibernating and conserving my energy at the moment.

Goodness me where has the year gone? It's been an age since I last did a blog. I've been taking it easy during November after what ended up being an incredibly busy season. July and September were much busier than in previous years as people took the opportunity of a much needed escape, and we kept Badger and Woodpecker open longer than usual, to the end of the October half term. It was so lovely to welcome back so many returning customers this year and new faces too of course. 

The November lockdown has been a good excuse to rest and recuperate (while also catching up on boring things like the accounts!) and it's been a great time to reflect back on the year and what we have achieved. 

18th May is the start of Mental Health Awareness week. Mental wellbeing is something close to my heart for a number of reasons, so I'd like to share with you a few tools I've been using to keep my mind (and body, but mainly my mind) healthy, not just during lockdown, but in everyday life.

​So here we go, my top tips for everyday mental wellness: 
​

1st of May or May Day is traditionally a day of great celebration. Usually we have a Bank Holiday on the first Monday in May, though of course this year it was moved to Friday 8th May to coincide with Victory in Europe (VE) Day, which marks the 75th anniversary of the formal end of World War 2.

As with many of our festivals and feast days May Day has its origins in an earlier celebration, this time the Celtic festival of Beltane, which celebrates the fertility and greening of Earth. In the past it was considered to be the start of Summer. Read on to find out a bit more about this festival and how you can celebrate it yourself. 

Today is a new moon. It's a great time to set new intentions for the year if you’ve not done so already or to start again if you’ve stumbled. Apparently yesterday (12th January) is the day most people fail at their New Year's resolutions and chuck in the towel. I'm not sure it occurs to many of them that maybe their resolutions were unrealistic in the first place so they had set themselves up for disappointment and that feeling of failure and self loathing.

No longer do I plan to start punishing exercise regimes or try ultra-healthy but ultra-boring diets in January. Instead I set positive intentions and aim to be kind to myself in Winter, to nourish both body and mind to get through what even in an ordinary year can be a bit of a dark and depressing time. Winter is the natural time for us to hibernate so embrace the opportunity to be at home more than usual and rest and restore ready for Spring.

We are fortunate that our award-winning glamping site here at Blackdown Yurts is located in the middle of it all. Despite being tucked away in a hidden rural valley, when you holiday here it is easy to get out and visit places within Mid-Devon or venture slightly further afield into East, North or South Devon and even into Somerset, Dorset or Cornwall too! We provide a file with leaflets to numerous holiday attractions in the communal barn, but in this digital age there are number of online offerings visitors will find useful in deciding where to go and what to see and do.

​The newest of these is a brand new resource for visitors to Mid Devon in the form of the Visit Mid Devon website. I went to the launch a couple of nights ago in Tiverton, Mid-Devon's district town. The website is super easy to use and has listings of What's On in the region, places to visit and stay (here obviously!), food and drink, cycling and walking routes and more. I've listed a few more online resources and apps at the end of the blog. 

​We've picked out a few events that are coming up during the Easter holidays and places to visit year round too. One thing we can't control for is the weather so we've included plenty of indoor options too. Hopefully it will cheer up in March though. Fingers crossed! 

One of our aims since arriving here nearly four years ago has been to plant some trees on the land, and we're thrilled to say that this plan is finally coming to fruition this Spring with the launch of our Adopt-A-Tree programme. ​

I don't think I had ever heard the word until last year when someone I follow on Instagram posted a gorgeous photo of snowdrops and referred to 'imbolc' (pronounced im'olc). It's a time of year that always reminds me of my paternal grandmother, Freda. Her birthday was 7th February and she had the most wonderful array of snowdrops in her garden. 

Imbolc celebrates the return of the Sun and the re-awakening or 'quickening' of nature  following the Winter's rest. ​In the last few days it has been noticeably lighter in the mornings and the afternoons don't seem to close in quite so early. Snowdrops and daffodils are pushing up through the earth and there are buds of blossom on the trees, forerunners of the Spring to come. Imbolc is traditionally the start of the lambing season too, although we had our first twins in the field adjacent to the yurts on New Year's Day so they are now nearly a month old!​ Read on to learn more about the origins and traditions associated with imbolc.