Back to basics in the great outdoors!

The rural idyll that is fforest farm was set up by James Lynch and his partner Sian Tucker. This exceptional holiday destination consists of 200 acres of countryside sandwiched between the river Teifi gorge and the Teifi marshes nature reserve just moments from the coast.

The fforest farm project started in 2005 and now offers a fantastic range of holiday accommodation in unique tented camps and converted farm buildings. This is an environment where you can escape the pressures of modern city living and simply enjoy meeting, eating, drinking, relaxing, learning and having fun.

Co-founder James Lynch describes their inspiration: Our dream was to combine the life-enhancing feeling of living outdoors with the simplest of things all wrapped up in the luxury of a magical setting, underpinned by all the design and creative skills that Sian and I had learned over the years.”

James and Sian are both art school graduates who met in 1981, shortly after James had graduated from St Martins and Sian from the Royal College. They set up studios in Charlotte Road inShoreditch. Sian was creating textiles and publishing children's books while James was designing graphics, exhibitions and shops.

In 1985 with money saved from their work, and the help of a bank manager who backed his hunch (there used to be such things) theybought an old furniture warehouse on Old Street which they converted into studios and rented out to creative friends. This led to James becoming a property developer of studios and apartments for the pioneering creatives of early Shoreditch.

But the area changed. Where once it had been about appropriation of raw space. Raw space became trophy loft. The city boys had moved in, looking to rub shoulders with bohemia in a vain aspiration for cool. James and Sian had also changed. They were now a family with four young boys.

A trip to New Zealand made them realise that they already had the very thing they were looking for. It was the place that they and their boys had spent every summer: in the village where Sian's parents lived, a place they knew really well, West Wales.

As James says, “The Kiwis taught us to make the most of what you have, to prize what’s in your own backyard and to give people a great welcome. I knew fforest farm was for sale. In the week we arrived back from New Zealand we agreed the purchase. I’d been lucky in London, now to start the process of ungluing and creating our new dream.

That dream would be about celebrating how good ‘simple’ could look, feel and taste. The results can be enjoyed by anyone looking for a great time going back to basics in style at fforest farm.

fforest, Bridge Warehouse, Cardigan, Ceredigion SA43 3AA

website: coldatnight.co.uk

A stitch in time in...

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