There’s an air of the great North American wilderness about this particular camping experience. You clamber aboard an Old Town open canoe and paddle downriver to your destination – a Native American-style tipi sitting majestically on the banks of a river. Except the Mississippi this ain’t – you’re on the River Wye in stunning Herefordshire country.
This is a professional set-up. It has to be, as you need a health and safety chat before you can go on the river. The Tipi Adventure team is a friendly and relaxed bunch and happy to help with anything you may have forgotten (a fully charged mobile phone is a compulsory accessory for such eventualities, and for arranging to be picked up). After wriggling into your lifejacket you and your picnic are put into a canoe, then on to the water at an agreed spot (some people want to canoe all day, others for only a couple of hours), while any luggage is driven to the tipi to await your arrival. All very civilised.
You then take your time paddling downstream, stopping at the river’s edge for lunch – and trying to avoid the (extremely serious) fishermen posted randomly along the riverbank. It’s great fun cutting through the water at whatever pace you want to set, quacking at ducks and learning from other canoeists’ mistakes (the odd capsizing or two have been known to happen). And just when you think you can’t possibly paddle any further, the poles of a tipi will be peaking out behind the bend in the river. Perfect.
It’s exciting to bale out of the canoe, clamber up the bank, and run across the field to your tipi and your belongings waiting inside. Time to light a fire and hang any soggy clothing off the guy ropes. Then flop, cook, explore the riverbank, or quench that thirst you’ve built up.
The joy of these tipis is their location: remote and secret. There’s barely any light pollution, so stargazing on a clear night is the main attraction, as well as listening to the crackling of the campfire (and fellow tipi-dwellers doing exactly the same). Oh, and you’ll be glad you stocked up on marshmallows at basecamp. Nothing like a chargrilled bit of stickiness to keep the blood sugar levels up for the next day’s activity.
Waking up to the sound of river-bird song, or a fish leaping out of the water, is wonderful. It really is that rural here. And eating bacon that you’ve just fried over the fire pit is a great way to get your energy up for the day’s adventure. Before you leap back into the canoe pack up all your belongings, which you’ll be reunited with later on back at basecamp.
It’s such a serene way to start the day, once again paddling through the clear water…Forget that – time to get competitive and catch up with your neighbours from the night before, to see who can get to the New Harp Inn at Hoarwithy for lunch first.
At some stage you’ll meet the Tipi Adventure driver at a pre-arranged place to load your canoe on to the trailer before clambering into the minibus, smelling of bonfire smoke. And, taking one last glance back at that stunning river, you’ll wish you’d paddled that bit further.
