It sounds romantic: a faux fur mattress, an open fire and the company of a
loved one in the North Norfolk countryside.
But throw in separate sleeping bags, an open-air sprint to the bathroom and an
inquisitive badger… and a weekend in a tipi (as the company spells it) is
not your average chocolate-covered strawberries and fluffy bathrobes break.
It was certainly more memorable than a boutique hotel though, and I’d venture
more romantic - snuggling is vital when there’s only canvas between you and
a cloudless winter night sky.
We were staying in one of four tipis in Burnham Deepdale, a village in what is
now a trendy length of North Norfolk coastline. The tipis are part of a
happy little commune of hostel accommodation, a cafe, shop and campsite. The
site buzzes in summer and quietly simmers the rest of the year when only the
brave venture under canvas.
It dipped to nine degrees one evening, and well below that at night – I could
see my breath inside the tipi, nevermind outside.
Apart from the canvas walls, rough carpeted floor on a raised wooden platform
and the faux fur mattresses, our other item of life sustaining kit was a
chimnea. It took a couple of attempts to master - via near suffocation by
smoke inhalation for trying to burn damp wood - but before long the tipi was
toasty.
That said, we slept in tracksuit bottoms, sweaters and alpaca socks that
haven’t seen the light of day since leaving Peru. This is essential gear for
the small hours, when the glow has gone from your chimnea embers and the
mercury drops to single digits.
It was late October when I stayed there with three friends – yes, the other
two might have taken the edge off the romance, but we needed them for their
body warmth…
I was also pleased of the company when one of our party, a wildlife
enthusiast, chased a furry interloper from the threshold our tipi.
Whether a badger had really tried to invade our tipi at 3am I’ll never know,
but my suspicions rest with the mind-bending properties of Norfolk Wherry,
the peaty local ale that we’d enjoyed in abundance at the excellent White
Horse pub, a ten-minute walk from the site.
Each tipi sleeps up to six people in the basic accommodation described above,
and while the toilet block is a two-minute dash across the field, its
under-floor heating and blasting hot showers are worth the soggy feet. The
lights are on sensors to save electricity, and there are other
environmentally-sound practices - recycling bins, solar panels, hedges
retained for wildlife habitats, and crop rotation.
The information centre is also well equipped, with a shop selling all manner
of camping paraphernalia, including charcoal (to use on the metal barbeques
dotted around the site), torches, batteries, folding chairs, beach towels,
games, plus OS maps, leaflets on local attractions, pubs and restaurants and
local transport information.
My favorite part of the story is the picture, showing lovely tipi living, of Breakfast at the Deepdale Cafe.
Hermann Burchard , Stillwater , Oklahoma