There are no chipped manicures here in the most rural of locations, in fields, forests and clearings, near rivers, in a treehouse, or beside the sea.
If tent pitching and sleeping on the floor aren't your thing, you can usually guarantee that luxury yurt camping actually will be. Weatherproofed and with internal heating, yurt holidays can be a good choice all year-round.
Experience nature within your comfort zone
A pot of tea steams at the lip of the wood-fired oven. The pot is easy to reach from your deck chair, but the sunset has equal gravitational pull as it cloaks itself behind the Welsh valley treeline. Rare breed oxen trim the grass in the dwindling evening light and the flowers close as the chill draws in. The fire is warm, so you can pull up a chair inside beside the wrought iron stove. But you can still gaze at the stars through the yurt's skylight.
Yurt breaks are about privacy, seclusion and getting back to nature without stepping too far out of luxury. In the clearing in the woods you might expect to find fine woven carpets, Egyptian cotton sheets spread over a sleigh bed and a rolltop bath fed by hot piped water. Strange things indeed if not for the waterproof coverings and wooden circular frames that conceal them, with stout wooden floorboards underfoot. Yurts can often be more luxurious and better equipped than a hotel room and at a fraction of the price.
What exactly is a yurt?
Yurts vary in size dramatically, from large family or group tents with several beds and seating areas, to romantic yurts for two flung with the same decorative rugs and luxurious trimmings around a central kingsize bed. Many are kitted out inside by interior designers. Yurts are designed for luxury camping for two, or for outdoor group adventures.
Yurt accommodation has very low environmental impact, making them a popular sustainable travel choice for ecotourism. Keeping with the theme, activities tied in with yurt breaks might include survivalist skills for the Welsh wilds and bush craft, but yoga courses and outdoor painting lessons also find their place here. Glamping is one of those terms that might disappear as fast as you can say flashpacking, but it really does apply to Welsh yurt breaks, alongside other trends like cool camping.
Yurts have been popular for centuries in the treeless high steppe grasslands of Turkey, Hungary, Mongolia and various Indo-European countries. Traditional yurts are designed to be portable and easy to assemble, with complete construction taking about two hours. Many of the holiday yurts in Wales are semi-permanent evolutions of this theme. You are unlikely to find their owners carrying them from place to place by camel or yak. The roof coverings were originally made from the wool of the flocks of sheep tended by the shepherds that lived in them. These layers provide insulation and weatherproofing and cut out the draft.
As the fire's embers crackle, your dinner is just cooked. Brushing your feet at the doorway mat, you open the door and stare out once more across the fields over a dinner that has truly come from field to fork.
