I have just been staying in a yurt. A very fine yurt, tucked into a clearing in the wonderfully wild, woolly and verdant garden belonging to old friends of the late David Fleming, author of that extraordinary blueprint for a sustainable future, Lean Logic.
I had never seen, let alone stayed in, a yurt before. But what an unexpectedly charming experience. Roomy, very cosy once its own wood burning stove was up and running, romantic and truly Mongolian with its weaving willow rafters winding up to a small glass dome and crossed willow wands supporting the canvas cover. Complete with candles, a Kelly kettle, a tap and sink outside the door, a stone lined barbecue with chairs and tables in front and an outdoor bath under which you light a fire to heat the water, what more could you want?
The yurt lives on the Lincolnshire coast just east of Louth (delightful bustling little mediaeval town with more good food shops than I have seen in years), ten minutes from wide salt marshes (now the protected home of many rare wading birds) where you can sit on the dunes to listen to the silence – until you realise that the silence is not silent at all but peppered with the distant calls of the wading inhabitants.
Forty minutes away is Lincoln with the largest cathedral in the world (well, it certainly looks as though it is) perched upon the top of a steep hill along with a baronial castle, a copy of Magna Carta, a Victoria prison (the first ever ‘separated’ prison) and a narrow, winding main street called Steep Hill which totally justifies its name by being at least 1 in 4.
Best of all, having enjoyed the produce of my lovely hosts’ prolific garden while there, I came home laden with with this chard which looked so wonderful that I had not the heart to chop it up and put it in the fridge, a few of the grapes from which they will later make wine, a bag full of apples rescued from the cider pile, and reinspired to ‘make my garden grow’ – well, grow something more useful than fuschias and delphiniums anyhow! Next year there is to be rocket round the foot of the clematis, chard in tubs (my miserable chard-failure earlier in the year might just have been down to badly drained London clay), parsley lining my flower beds………
If you fancy a romantic night or two in a Lincolnshire yurt (getting inspired about gardening does not have to come with the package), you can have one, between March and October provided it is not already booked up, for a very reasonable price. Just check in to the Tithe Farm website.
PS In case you are lucky enough to get your hands on some chard – although I doubt that it could ever be as magnificent as mine – I can offer you a few recipes:
Butter bean and chard salad
Tuna steaks with chard and coconut milk
Quinoa with Chard and Pine Nuts
Flageolet, fennel and chard pot with green pepper corns