Wooden Sculpture Park or Yurt Holiday Site?

Glamping sites have become so popular over the last decade - there aren’t many families who have come to stay with us who haven’t been on some sort of glamping adventure before. It’s camping without the hassle of setting up or packing away a soggy tent and without having to load every item imaginable from your kitchen cupboards.

With the explosion of glamping (and we’ve seen it - we set up our site in 2003 before the word ‘glamping’ had even been invented!) standing out as a unique yurt holiday site has been tricky over the last decade. We started with tipi holidays and ventured across to yurt holidays, enabling us to insulate the yurts so we were able to keep going all year around.  But just having a yurt for people to stay in isn’t enough for a true adventure - so we have endeavoured to create something magical here at Larkhill! 

The woodland we planted in 1998 is not only a haven for wildlife and nature but now includes many beautiful and incredible wood carvings and sculptures! 

We’ve been fortunate enough to have some very talented friends who have kindly created some intriguing wooden carvings and structures at Larkhill, many of which are inspired from nature and cultures from around the globe. This mirrors the theme of our glampsite as we have nomadic structures from all over the world… yurts from Mongolia and Kazakhstan, a tipi from North America, an Alachigh yurt from Iran and the Lavvu inspired from the Sami tribe in Scandinavia. 

The first wooden carvings and sculptures we started creating here were simple mushroom designs, very apt as our woodland has a huge variety of fungi.

For her 50th birthday, Fran’s family and friends commissioned a wood carving of an owl and a dog which sits in the centre of our labyrinth circle. And that was the beginning of our passion for carvings….

A friend and talented metal sculpturist John Brown started his career using wood and created many of our animal sculptures - owls, a raven, a lizard and a grass snake. He also created what we called ‘The ‘Hand of John’, which sadly succumbed to the elements last year. 

The most incredible carving though is the 18ft totem pole. We can honestly say we don’t know of another glamping site in Wales that has one! Its creator, our friend Ian Manley (who we first met when he came to stay with us in 2011 with his family), had previously carved quite a few of our other sculptures. In 2016 he came up with the idea for a full sized Totem pole… after creating an adorable proto-type which welcomes our guests and is located in the car parking area.

The larch tree that we chose was one of the biggest we had in our woodland and, after cutting off the top, taking off its branches and stripping off the bark, Ian started working on it in the spring of 2017. Hours and hours were spent designing the layout of this impressive carving and Ian came to stay with us during school holidays and on any spare weekend he had to chisel away. Most of his work was carried out at quite some height - whatever the weather! Ian also carved an amazing Celtic cross, a Maori/Welsh welcoming gateway, a fairy village tucked away in the woodland for children's imaginations to soar, magicians peering down at you and many intricate bird boxes.  

If you would like more information about our sculpture park please feel free to message and we hope you come to stay to look at all of our wonderful sculptures for yourselves.