An eco-chic birthday party at Fernhill Farm – in Somerset

If you like to wear your Wellie boots with style and don’t think that being eco-friendly should mean looking anything but your gorgeous best, then Fernhill Farm, just south of Bristol could be the perfect party venue for you.

Our excuse for a celebration was my daughter Sophie-Anne’s birthday which she shared with her friend Elin and a group of 25 schoolfriends. To find a venue for a weekend celebration involving fun, games, glamour and sleepover to satisfy these young ladies’ exacting standards could have been a headache, but luckily Elin’s mum found out about Fernhill Farm through friends in the area – their accomodation has only been open since Autumn 08.

To get there we passed Chew Valley Lake, where we used to go sailing and climbed up the edge of the Mendip hills and down a muddy pot-holed track. Fernhill Farm is very much a working farm, but the old stone buildings are in the process of being renovated, and the first to be finished is their camping barn. To call it a camping barn is a bit of an understatement, for it is a series of stone former cowsheds which now combine large dining room, cosy drinks parlour, commercial standard kitchen, open barn with a dance floor and crash-out matresses and further private sleeping area.

The whole place is built using recycled stone and wooden beams from the farm with cosy sheepskins from the farm sheep draped everywhere and colourful artwork on the walls. The girls had their own party in the dance barn then crashed out on the matresses while Elin’s mum and I luxuriated on sheepskins in a sort of four-poster bunk bed arrangement, made out of recycled beams.

The day was non stop action of different activities and contests that the birthday girls had devised, including blindfold cheesecake making, birthday cake decorating, a quiz about the birthday girls’ likes and dislikes and an egg throwing contest incorporating a waterfight. We mum’s could only wonder at such energy as we trailed behind clearing up the debris it generated. Finally it was time for some serious glamour with the hair straighteners, high heels and lip gloss coming out for dressing up that I could never compete with, and not a boy in sight!

After dinner (lasagne and birthday cake washed down with Coke) the i-pod was plugged into the speakers for dancing followed by a show from which parents were banned, and we had to resort to pressing our nose against the window from outside to catch a glimpse of the action. Soon we retired to leave the girls to crash out in their own good time and be up in time to provide breakfast and pizzas to a slightly more sleepy group of girls the next day, before ferrying them all home to Bristol.

Fernhill farm would be the perfect venue to a birthday celebration, hen party, or daytime activity with loads of stylish indoor and outdoor space for socialising and room to crash out for up to 30 people if you don’t mind the communal sleeping arrangements. They take their eco-credentials very seriously with heating from a boiler powered with wood from the farm and a wetland ecosystem to filter the water waste through reedbeds just like Prince Charles has at Highgrove. The sheepskins used in the furnishing are all from the sheep on the farm and they sell ther own meat here too. So if you’re looking for a party and sleeping venue within striking distance of Bristol in the beautiful surroundings of the Mendip Hills, then do check out Fernhill Farm (you can keep up with their programme of events on their blog here ).

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See all my photos of Fernhill Farm on Flickr

www.flickr.com heatheronhertravels’ Somerset – Fernhill Farm photoset

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