Beth Elderton meets the owners of a campsite where regulars come to enjoy the silence
When campers arrive at Westermill Farm in the heart of Exmoor’s National Park, owner, Oliver Edwards, has a polite request for them. He asks them to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the site.
“A lot of regular people who come here just want to get away from man-made noise. Here, apart from me on the tractor, there’s no man-made noise as we have a no-radio policy,” he says. “I’ll usually go and tell them ‘come here and just listen to nothing, listen to nature’. That is the whole beauty of being here.”
Campers can also sit out at night toasting marshmallows on campfires or stargazing. “We are right in the middle of the Exmoor Dark Sky Reserve,” says Oliver. “People come out here and just look at the stars.”
Westermill Farm has been in the Edwards family for more than 80 years. Although it has long attracted Scouts and Guides to stay, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the family decided to diversify properly into camping to help to ease what Oliver describes as the hand-to-mouth existence of hill farming.
Since taking over the campsite from his parents around 40 years ago, Oliver and his wife, Jill, have focused on improving the camping experience. Campers can choose their pitches on a site that comprises four paddocks with 60 pitches in total, plus rope swings, trails and the tree-lined River Exe. “It's a bit like Swallows and Amazons,” Oliver says. “The kids disappear and when they’re hungry, they come back.”
One particular innovation on the site, as Oliver and Jill have developed it further, is the installation of a drying room, a godsend thanks to the changeable weather of Exmoor, says Oliver. “We found that when people came here, if they got wet in the first night or two, or the kids got wet in the river, they would have to go home so we put in a drying room.”
The room is fuelled by a biomass wood chip boiler that burns timber from the farm. It was launched by the world-renowned explorer and travel writer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a neighbour and friend of the Edwards family, who Oliver asked to officially switch the boiler on. He recalls with a chuckle how “with the stump of his finger, he [Ranulph] pushed the button of the boiler”.
The camping season doesn’t tend to get into full swi
