Dust off your headdress and polish your moccasins, for if you go down to Simpson Cross today, you’re sure of a wig(wam) surprise… A pasture reserved for grazing horses in the winter months is transformed into a vision from the prairies of the Wild West come summer, with the addition of three rather magnificent tipis.
Drive through a field speckled with tents, campervans, and the occasional small caravan to emerge into a second field. This expanse of lush meadow is further from the road and shielded from view by a hotchpotch hedge of gorse, brambles and bracken. A carefully mown track leads you to your tipi, as the flowery field tumbles gently down into a valley. In the early morning it’s so full of swirling mists it looks like an ocean is stretching out before you.
The tipis march majestically down the hill, keeping a civilised distance from one another, their doorways facing shyly into the well-established hedgerow, sheltered from the wind and from view. Ready and waiting for your arrival, each tipi is labelled with a tag on the door of its lovingly hand-crafted kitchen structure, giving the proceedings a magical treasure-hunt feel. Inside, you’ll find everything you could possibly need for knocking up some serious culinary camping creations, all topped off with a tufty green roof. Des, the site owner, has also provided an enchantingly eclectic reading shelf in here – itself a structural marvel, with a complex kind of rope suspension system. It’s a reflection of how this place works – everything is here, everything has been considered, but guests aren’t mollycoddled. This may not be the glossy, Sunday-supplement idea of ‘glamping’ some people expect – it’s much better. Here, it’s just basic enough to give you that heady sense of camping adventure, just with much less kit…and fuss.
Outside, you’ll find a stone-encircled fire pit and a rustic but effective cast iron BBQ, replete with everything man might need in order to make fire – perfect for the armchair-Ray Mears’ among us. So wrap yourself in the cosy woven blankets, lie back, and watch the smoke from your campfire carry all your thoughts and dreams up to the powerful spirits in the starlit Pembrokeshire sky.
Now, Des doesn’t really like the idea of signs; he’s a big believer in the common sense of the camper, and who wants to be told what to do on holiday? In Des’ own words, if he were to put up a sign, it would probably say something along the lines of ‘Don’t throw stones at this sign’. Having said that, don’t be surprised to find him in the lane’s hedge on your arrival, surreptitiously adding a feathered headdress to the rider on the horse sign – it’s a thankless task, he’s yet to find a sufficiently weatherproof pen.