Wishing all our guests, past and future a very Happy 2025 - we hope the new year will bring joy and peace to all.  

We have lots of availability in our cabin at the moment, priced at £200 for two nights for couples, we're also offering free hot tub heating this winter, outside the school hols, so if you book a stay at the moment and add on the hot tub, we'll have it steaming hot (40 degrees) for your arrival, so all you have to do is tell us what time you're arriving and it will be ready for you to step in!    The cabin is warm and cosy, heating by an efficient wood burning stove - with fire wood provided, you'll be snug in there whatever the weather.  If there are more of you, there's a bunk room, suitable for two young children in the cabin too.  Adults have a king bed and a rural view over fields and woodland.  

The cabin is in a different location to the safari tents, the garden is enclosed and fenced so there's plenty of privacy, it's not over looked - you may well only see the odd rabbit, fox or sheep during your stay, unless you need us for something!   

Time passes fast here, as there's always something going on, on the farm.  Lambs will start appearing in March when our farm tours become busier with curious children asking us all kind of questions!  Middle Stone Farm is in rural West Somerset, most of our neighbours are all farmers, you'll hear the sounds of the farming community around you, mooing, tractors, birds, horses, baaing, more tractors, the odd pheasant.....  all this sort of thing is on the website.

We're half an hour west of Taunton, easy to get to via the M5 or the A303, but we're not close to any major roads, so you won't hear any road sound when you're here.  

Wiveliscombe is about 15 minutes drive from us, with a couple of pubs, children's playground with skate park and independent pubs.  The West Somerset coast is just 25 minutes away, free to park at Blue Anchor Bay, or Dunster Beach.  Dunster Castle is a similar distance - a great National Trust open all year round, with lots of do and see for all ages!  

The beach below is Kilve beach in Somerset - it's really quite unusual, with its curious rock formations, rock pools, large fossils and views over the Bristol channel towards Wales.  

We expect lambs to start start appearing in late March, the spring is such a lovely time of year.  All of West Somerset seems to be lambing in fact!  We lamb for about a month, lamb cuddles will be included on farm tours.  

We have our own unique brand of sheep - a mixture of a Jacob, a Norfolk, and Exmoor and our lovely ram Rene is a Bleu du Maine.  He really does produce gorgeous lambs!  

This is a good time to make a booking if you're a group, when we have whole fields of lodges available. If you're an adult group, we host adult groups outside the school holidays.  We have a open fronted barn space which we can lend groups so you can all eat together too.

Glamping in the autumn offers the perfect blend of outdoor adventures, with cozy comfort that's hard to match with autumn's vibrant colors—reds, oranges, and yellows—making for stunning natural views. Glamping puts you right in the heart of nature, offering breathtaking landscapes without the hassle of traditional camping.

The cooler temperatures are perfect for bundling up in blankets around a campfire or inside around the wood burning stove.  Enjoy hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows or s'mores in the misty autumn air.  West Somerset has plenty to explore with amazing walks in Exmoor National Park, explore the ancient family friendly Dunster Castle and beautiful village with its many independent shops and cafes.  The coast is nearby for walks, or fossil hunting, and the nearby town of Taunton has lots of food options, cinema, bowling and a good free museum.  
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Middle Stone Farm's  Swedish hot tubs offer the perfect blend of rustic charm, luxury and relaxation.  There are solar lights offering just enough light to find your way in, if you're hot tubbing in the dark - low right allowing you to still enjoy the stars - Exmoor is a designated Dark Sky Reserve. 

The hot tubs bring health benefits combining the therapeutic effects of warm water, with the natural eco friendly appeal of the wood fired heating system.  Relaxing in a hot tub relaxes muscles and mental tension, making them a great way to unwind and reduce stress.  The natural setting of the hot tub also enhances this effects with the calming sounds of nature.  We understand they're also great for improving your sleep quality.  
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We have last minute availability this summer in a choice of accommodations - safari tents, holiday cottage or quirky cabin.  We also have dates where whole fields are available, perfect for a group of families to stay together with the privacy of taking a whole field.  If you're staying in Buzzard, Hawk and Kestrel we have a barn space where you can all eat together.   If you're in the other field, Bossington is huge and perfect for group dining.  

Four of our lodges are dog friendly - these are Buzzard, Hawk, Kestrel and Porlock, we have a paddock where you can let your dogs off their leads.  All the local West Somerset pubs and beaches are dog friendly too!  There aren't restrictions on the beaches around here, plus Exmoor is gorgeous for walking.  

Short Stays Available through August
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We're trying to be a lot more flexible this year and have short stays available from 2 night stays - perfect if you're passing us on the way to or from Cornwall.  

The Deckhouse Cabin sleeps four, in a king room and a mini bunk room (suitable for children under 12), it's in a separate location to the safari tents, perfect for guests wanting privacy.  There's an enclosed garden with apple trees and the views are onto open farmland with grazing animals.  There's a hot tub, hammock and solar fairy lighting - it's open all year round with couple discounts starting again in September. 

We run regular farm tours whenever we have guests staying, guests will find farm tour dates in their check in emails.  The piglets are getting quite large now, so we're admiring them from the fence line. Greedy the hungry ewe always provides guest entertainment as does our pet goose, our small flock of chickens and alpaca with their beautiful long eyelashes!
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Days Out, there's plenty to do within a half an hour radius of the farm.  Dunster Castle is a family favourite, a great National Trust, you can easily spend a whole day there.  Blue Anchor Beach and Dunster Beach are right next door, if you have the energy for a beach walk afterwards.  The Quantock Hills are beautiful with incredible views over the Channel, as is North Hill above Minehead.  

Wiveliscombe is about 12 minutes away, with an outdoor pool, two pubs, small Saturday farmer's market and independent shops. There's also a skate park near the swimming pool. 

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Summer has finally arrived (and I've realised we've not posted a blog for a while!). 

We've hosted lots of new visitors this year including lots of groups and it's lovely to see people enjoying the farm. 

The hundreds of new trees and thousands of hedge saplings we planted a few years ago are flourishing and hopefully it won't be long until we can remove the tree guards and let them fend for themselves!

The lambs born in April are no longer lambs, and we have a flock of fat little sheep now.  We also have four pigs this year - Iggle & Piggle and Ant & Dec - a combination of Berkshires and Durocs.  Iggle & Piggle are still small enough for guests can come in and stroke them during our farm tours.  We admire Ant and Dec from the other side of their fence as they are quite strong now!

For anyone thinking about a glamping holiday this summer, we have lots of availability and this year we are offering lots of short breaks all through the summer including August. 

Middle Stone Farm is based in a very rural unspoilt part of the South West.  We're not in a tourist hot spot, so once you're in our local area you won't find queues of caravans or lots of holiday traffic on the road, you're more likely to be following a tractor or to see a hedgehog or sheep in the road!  

We have lots of ideas and suggestions of places to visit, from Tarr Steps, to the Lorna Doone Valley, Valley of the Rocks, Simonsbath, Kilve beach where you will most certainly stumble over giant fossils, Dunkery Beacon, Wimbleball Lake or the unspoilt nearby coast. 

On a hot day, you'll find us on paddle boards at Wimbleball, about 25 minutes drive from the farm.  

Although lots of guests don't leave once they arrive here, we have hot tubs, and hammocks to lie around in or the elevated lodge decks are perfect for reading a book and listening to birdsong.  

We made a fourth safari lodge dog friendly last year, so we now have plenty of options available if you'd like to bring your dog on holiday with you.  Our dog friendly lodges are Buzzard, Hawk, Kestrel and Porlock and we can host two well behaved dogs in any of these accommodations.  

Alpacas are shy creatures, so you're welcome to bring your dog on its lead on our farm tours, but we do ask you to stay a little distance away so they come to the cereal bucket!

We're fast approaching the Easter holidays when our safari tents open for the glamping season, and our lambs are due around the same time.  We usually try and lamb before the majority of guests arrived, but Easter is early this year, so we'll be juggling welcoming guests and welcoming lambs!  Farm tours are available all year round, but they're best from Easter to November when the vintage tractor comes out of hibernation, and we have baby animals around!  

We still have availability for both Easter weekend, and for the rest of the school holidays afterwards - we have a choice of accommodation from a safari lodge which is a 100% glamping experience, or the cabin which has a few more mod cons, or the holiday cottage which isn't glamping at all, but it does have quirky features!  

Groups of families are welcome, for big groups we ask families to take a whole field so you have a field to yourselves.  

We have made a fourth accommodation dog friendly this year, as in 2023 we had more families wanting dog friendly options, than we had available.  The four accommodations where we accept two dogs are Kestrel, Hawk, Buzzard and Porlock Lodges.  The non-dog friendly lodges are Bossington, Kilve, The Stable Cottage and The Deckhouse Cabin.    So if you have a pet allergy these are the ones to go for.  Although do remember, we are a farm, there are animals everywhere - we have three dogs too, they shouldn't come into any of the accommodation, but they do occasionally post a nose in, when our backs are turned hoovering!  

We have two new pigs arriving tomorrow, they're not travelling far, Ian our neighbour next door breeds Berkshires so we're buying a few from over the fence.  They're not fun to transport, so this is much kinder, just a little trot down our drive and into a new paddock covered in thistles and lovely weeds for them to munch through!  

The seasons changed this week and there is definitely a sniff of Autumn in the air.    We have lots of availability at the moment, it's quiet here at this time of year so if you book a stay you may well find you have the place to yourselves!  I expect we'll be busy over October Half Term, we usually are, we have lots of availability still if you'd like to stay.  All our accommodation has wood stoves, the stoves in the safari tents are large and if you use them correctly they'll heat the tent space so you're cosy.  There are firepit style barbecues outside for  toasting marshmallows, warming toes or cooking over the fire.  As the nights draw in earlier our outside festoon lights come on with enough light for you to be able to find your hot tub!  Inside the safari tents we have LED lighting as well as a few tea lights, so it might be pitch black outside but you'll still be able to see.

We're very close to Exmoor National Park, it's just 3 miles from the farm and a really beautiful landscape to explore.  September brings colour whilst the heather is in flower and the morning mists are ethereal.  I took this photograph from the road going up the hill on from Porlock, there are lots of places to pull over, walk, sip coffee from a thermos or take a footpath and explore.  We're so close to Wales you'll get a good view of the Welsh coast from up here.  

There's a list of local places to visit on our website, we're near some good National Trusts and there are umpteen country pubs to visit too.  

This is Fernando, our Mangalitsa pig, he's 2 1/2 now, we don't usually keep pigs here so long.   He's a pedigree Swallow Belly, he'd really like a wife if you're reading this and you'd like to give him a new home!  He's fathered lots of gorgeous piglets here and he'd love to do that again on another farm.  I expect next year we'll go back to our usual pig breed, either Devon Blacks or Berkshires who grow a bit faster than this lovely fellow.  

If you're coming to stay and would like a farm tour, we do these once or twice a week, giving guests an opportunity to scratch Fernando whilst he's having his breakfast, feed the alpacas, cuddle a chicken, pat a sheep or two and hiss at a goose!

The six safari tents at Middle Stone Farm stay open until early November when it's time to shut them up for their winter rest and any renovations.  During the winter they are really too cold to stay in - if you want to stay over Christmas or New Year, our cottage and cabin are available and they will be much warmer!  

We're a bit quieter than usual at Middle Stone Farm this year and still have quite a bit of school holiday availability if you're planning a last minute glamping holiday.  We have lots of options here, and all our accommodation is child and family friendly, we also have dog friendly glamping options and take two dogs in three of our safari tents.  If you're a couple looking for an August break, our cabin, Kilve or Kestrel Lodges are popular for adult breaks - these have a bit more privacy and aren't so near the children's play areas.

All our glamping and our holiday cottage have hot tubs, they're large enough for all the family to get in together, and extra spacious if you plan to use them after the children are asleep!  

We have a dog paddock close to our dog friendly safari tents where dogs can run off their lead, it's fenced so should be a safe place and there's a bench in there so you can relax with a coffee (or beer) whilst your dog lets off steam.  All the beaches in West Somerset are dog friendly, and so are most of the local pubs.  There's a list of good walks on our website, and more on Visit Exmoor or the Exmoor National Park website. This is Otter our Giant Schnauzer, he only comes into the glamping fields on changeover days as where ever Patrick is, he'll be close by. 

We like to run our dogs at Blue Anchor Bay, it's about 25 minutes from us and a good mile or even more if the tide's out - there's stones at the top of the beach and sand near the shore, it's free to park and there are a couple of cafes at the beach as well.  Dunster Beach is next door if you want to add on a couple more miles and really tire them out!  Both beaches have ice cream vans too.  

We still have quite a lot of availability this summer with both short and long stays available, we have tried to be a bit more flexible this year.  Our three dog friendly glamping lodges are Buzzard, Hawk and Kestrel, we allow two well behaved dogs in each of these three lodges, we have a paddock available too where dogs can run off their leads whist you relax with a coffee or cider!  

We're a very family friendly site with two children's play areas within the glamping fields.  The grass is long and swishy at the moment and full of wild flowers which the butterflies are enjoying, although I expect the grass will become bales soon

This is one of our dog friendly glamping lodges, all our safari tents sleep up to six guests, they all have firepits like this one and large Swedish wood fired hot tubs.  When we arrived at Middle Stone Farm we planted a lot of shrubs and trees, the grass is lush here so it's taken them a while whilst they compete for space, but they're doing well this year and I think they're really pretty.  There are apple trees as well as some native Somerset varieties.  We have solar fairy lighting ncar the hot tubs so you can enjoy time outside without fumbling around for a torch.  There's very little light pollution in West Somerset, we're not near any cities so the clear nights are amazing for anyone wanting to do some star gazing.  

West Somerset is a bit of a secret whilst a lot of tourists whizz through on their way to Cornwall.   It's a really beautiful part of the South West, we're three miles from Exmoor, the least visited National Park in the country so you won't find the rivers and footpaths crowded.   We have a page of favourite walks above under our Explore page and the beaches are all fairly quiet as well, even on a busy Sunday in August.  They're a combination of sand and stones, the nearest beach is Blue Anchor Bay, 25 minutes from here, free to park with an inexpensive cafe called The Driftwood.  On a hot summer's day the rivers on Exmoor are pretty gorgeous, Tarr Steps (below) is the most famous, if you walk away from the clapper bridge you'll most likely have the footpath to yourselves and there are gorgeous spots for a picnic and wild swim.  

We've noticed some families who stay here for a short glamping break don't leave the farm!  Hanging out in a hot tub is a pretty relaxing way to spend an afternoon!  We have plenty of books, children's toys, we have a little glamping farm shop, alpacas to peer at over the hedge, childrens swings, climbing frames and lots of paths through the grass to play hide and seek.  Our hot tubs take 3hrs to heat up, if we're not busy we can sometimes heat them for guests, there's information about that on our hot tub page.  They're more eco than the electric hot tubs, our firewood comes from sustainable forestry nearby.  They're safe for children over the age of 5, and lovely for the adults when the children are tucked up in bed!

The beach at Kilve is a bit of a local secret, we love sharing local knowledge with our guests although I wonder if I should be writing a blog about it, too late now!  Kilve beach is really unusual looking, when we first moved to Somerset I saw it in the winter and found it terribly ugly, but over the years I've grown quite fond of it - and now we know where to find the fossils we visit regularly with our children and the dogs.  Unlike the Devon and Dorset Jurassic coast where you'll find small ammonites(if you're lucky) and everyone seems to be using hammers - the fossils at Kilve are huge, you don't need a hammer and you won't be putting them in your pocket, but leaving them there for the next visitors to find.  I like collecting smaller stones and I use them in art projects, there are so many interesting rocks and pebbles on this beach!  

We highly recommend walking in sturdy trainers or walking boots, the stones are like boulders so take care of your ankles whilst you fossil hunt.  If you're staying with us during your trip, ask us when you're here where we go, as some part of the beach have more fossils than others.  It's never busy at Kilve - even on a Sunday in August - take a picnic and there are beaches on the headland amount the wild flowers and the views towards Wales are beautiful and you'll spy a bit of Hinkley Power Station too which is interesting.  

Kilve beach car park is privately owned and there's a camera which clocks your number plate when you drive in, so please buy a ticket as soon as you get there, don't linger or buy it when you leave - you'll get a fine in the post, so buy a ticket as soon as you arrive!  There's a tea room next to the tea room - varying reviews on TripAdvisor so maybe read that before you go - we just get ice creams to take away and bring a picnic with us.  There's a small river by the car park with shade - our dogs love it here!  There's a footpath running along the low cliff above the beach so if you have the energy, do walk some of it- it's really pretty.  

If sandy beaches are more your scene, as you travel along the West Somerset coast, the rocky beaches become sandy beaches!  Blue Anchor is about 20 minutes from us and a combination of sand and pebble, Dunster beach has sand and so does Minehead.  The south Devon beaches are an hour's drive from us and also beautiful - but much busier, we tend to avoid the busy beaches in July and August and leave them for a September trip.  

Charmouth Beach is very famous for fossils, it's where Mary Anning lived and found the amazing Ichthyosaur skeletons on display at the the Natural History Museum.  Apparently she's the subject of the tongue twister - "she sells sea shells on the sea shore"!  

We went Charmouth at October Half Term with the children, and left fairly quickly as it was so crowded with all the families hammering away, we didn't really enjoy it - but there is a really good visitor centre in the car park who have some amazing displays - we had to queue to get in but it was worth it as they were amazing.  So if you're heading down to Charmouth - about 1 hr from us, we do suggest to go early in the morning to avoid the crowds.  Their website says they do fossil hunting walks which is probably a good idea if you don't want to come home empty handed.  Lyme Regis is next door and a really pretty place to visit and the bay is perfect for swimming.  Again we avoid this place in the summer - too crowded and parking is a pain, but lovely at the start and end of the summer and the winter when the crowds have pottered off!  

If you're planning a last minute get away for the next May Bank Holiday we have availability in quite a few options - we have several safari tents available, including some next to each other if you want to stay as a group.  The cottage and cabin are also available in a different location on the farm.  It's lush here now summer has finally arrived, I've just taken this photo this afternoon, the glamping fields are a sea of buttercups and we have moved the alpaca back into the field next door so families can admire them from the seating on the tent decks.

As it's last minute, we have reduced our stays into short breaks, although a week is always better value.  There will be some complimentary food items on the table when you arrive, and regular farm tours so every family has a chance to meet the animals with us.  Crossing my fingers the gorgeous weather looks set to continue, late May is really the loveliest month for glamping!  Our lambs are already fat and confidently running around the field away from their mothers, and the apple trees are still laiden with beautiful blossom, soon to turn into apples hopefully.

Whilst it's been quiet and we haven't had guests staying Patrick and I have been re painting the cabin which looked a bit tired over the winter.  It has a new Scandinavian vibe now, the lush greens of the farm and the apple trees look lovely against the dark colour, the front will stay white for a little while longer and we have plans to update the interior in September when we have a longer gap between guests.  

All our glamping and holiday cottages have Swedish hot tubs, they're the perfect place to relax at the end of  a day's exploring.  Our hot tubs come from Sweden, they're wood fired - you add logs which we provide to the hot tub stove and heat the water with a good hot fire.  There are solar fairy lights outside, shrubs, trees and fire pits outside all the safari tents and cabin too.  

We've planted several hundred trees since arriving at Middle Stone Farm, they've taken a little while to establish but this year they've really taken off.  Our apple orchard produces more apples than we'd ever for crumbles, so this year we'll look into sending it off to be converted to apple juice, or maybe investing in the kit to juice our apples ourselves.  Tomatoes and salad crops are growing well in the polytunnel and we have huge amounts of rhubarb, do ask us for some if you're staying here, it's delicious and free for our guests whilst we have so much.  We sell our freshly laid eggs in the shop, and sausages and chops come from our rare breed pigs, delicious cooked over the firepit (we have veggie and vegan options in our shop too).