It is 5am and I wake to the sound of a flock of greylag geese announcing the morning outside my tent. The dawn chorus is in full swing and shortly after I rise to enjoy it, I come face to face with a wild hare and see a muntjac deer flash past the boundary of the campsite.
Much to the envy of all my nature-loving friends, I am one of the first glampers to stay at the brand new campsite that recently opened at Pensthorpe Nature Park, an internationally renowned nature reserve near Fakenham in north Norfolk.
Around 170 species of bird have been recorded across the 280-hectare site, as well as otters, hedgehogs, bats, deer, badgers, voles, stoats, harvest mice, brown hares, trout, eels and catfish, plus a large number of dragonflies, moths and butterflies.
This summer, visitors will be able to stay overnight at the reserve for the first time, in a field set aside for 24 grass tent pitches and six glamping bell tents festooned with pennants. As I sit in my deckchair outside one of these tents, listening to a chiffchaff cheerfully greet the new day by calling its name, I suddenly realise: I am the only person awake in one of the most biodiverse nature reserves in England.
It gives me goosebumps a bit. The park, which is the size of over 400 football pitches, was created 40 years ago by millionaire conservationist Bill Makins, who extracted a million tonnes of gravel from the site and then transformed the former gravel pits into huge, man-made lakes and ponds. Most are fed by the River Wensum, which flows through the reserve; one of only 200 chalk streams in the world, the Wensum is a highly protected Site of Special Scientific Interest, providing the reserve’s wild and endangered waterfowl with naturally clean water from underground chalk aquifers and springs.
A few hours later, after my husband and our 12-year-old daughter Flora have woken up and we have eaten a sandwich in the reserve’s café, we leave the fenced-in camping area and officially enter the reserve’s wilderness for the first time.
Our first stop is a wading bird aviary where, under a huge net, avocets, corncrakes, bearded titmice and their young roam freely alongside us. I’ve never been anywhere like that before. “These are all birds we normally have on the reserve, but you would never get this close to their nests in the wild,” says David Roberts, a senior reserve manager, as we take a tour.
At 10:30pm I am fast asleep, only to be woken up a few hours later by the piercing call of an incredibly loud bird.
There are five gardens in the park in total. First, we walk through the wildlife habitat garden – designed to give gardeners ideas about how to support pollinators and wildlife at home – and out into the wave garden, a sculpture-filled woodland garden with cultivated species of wild plants. The entrance into the pristine landscape of the reserve itself is seamless, like a secret gateway to another world. “You don’t know you’re coming out of a garden, it just blends in,” says Roberts.
He spots a grebe on one of the lakes and points out a few diving ducks and some Egyptian geese before we duck into a bird hide where a swallow has made its nest in the ridge beams. He darts over to feed its hungry chicks, much to the delight of Flora, who can’t stop taking photos.
We pass a wildflower meadow of ragwort, bedstraw and knapweed, and cross a bridge where yellow reeds ripple underwater like a mermaid’s blonde locks. At one point, Flora rescues a baby toad from the path, coaxing it to leap onto her hand and then into the river reeds. Occasionally butterflies flutter by – Roberts knows all their names and seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of birds and insects. That evening he will set up a moth trap and observe species including a beautiful red elephant moth (which stays on Flora’s finger for five magical minutes) and some astonishing buff-tips, which look exactly like silver birch twigs.
Such a rich diversity of insects makes the reserve a haven for bats, and that evening we will join other campers and visitors on a special walk to capture nocturnal footage of the sopranos, brown long-eared bats and common pipistrelle bats. We will also look for animal and bird tracks and set up camera traps for passing wildlife.
Afterwards, we sit around the fire outside our tent, cook dinner, roast marshmallows and play cards. There are flushable, solar-powered toilets and showers on site, and accommodation in our bell tent consists of a double bed and three single beds, a bedside table, strings of lights, a thick rug and a power pack, which we can plug in a lamp or charge our phones.
At 10.30pm I am fast asleep – only to be woken a few hours later by the piercing call of an incredibly loud bird. I later learn it is one of eight noisy cranes living on the reserve – the Pensthorpe conservation charity runs a programme to breed and release these rare birds, which have been extinct in England for 400 years.
After a cooked breakfast in the cafe the next morning, we head back to the reserve to check on 67 flamingos and their chicks, as well as the cranes that woke me up. The East African grey crowned cranes are the most ostentatious, with their bright feathered headdresses, while the native cranes seem more elegant and refined.
We feed ducks, geese and moorhens with bird food from the shop, then head to the adventure playground (included in the entrance fee) to zipline on a cable car and swing halfway through the clouds on a rope swing.
After lunch there is just enough time before we have to leave to head back to the reserve for a final off-road vehicle tour. On a hillside in the vast wildflower meadow Flora and I spot a roe deer, almost completely camouflaged by thick purple thistles and white yarrow, watching us intently. This place is a wild place, she seems to say; it is wild and it is mine and it is precious. Then she darts off into the flowers and disappears, leaving nothing behind her but her powerful message.
The trip was organised by Visit Norwich and Pensthorpe nature park. A two-night glamping stay in a five-bed tent costs between €240 and £290including two days entrance in the reserve. Tent pitches €30-35 a night, included two to dawn‘ entrance to the park for an extra £16,95ppa 50% discount on daily rates. The campsite is open until the end of august