Soo and Jon's Journey
from Whitechapel to West Wales
Pembrokeshire in Wales is home to Top of the Woods eco luxury glamping campsite. We provide freedom and space for a relaxing stay with the perfect opportunity to reconnect in a beautiful natural wild space.
Dreaming of a new life adventure
Our dream was to create a nature-led campsite in beautiful Pembrokeshire and become the best loved campsite in Wales!
As hosts, Jon and I wanted to give our guests the best stay and create enriching, sustainable, award-winning glamping, and camping holidays in a natural wild space, that our guests love. We also wanted to protect nature and wildlife on our doorstep and help it thrive, with new richer habitat. We’ve never taken the beauty of our 27-acre site for granted and see ourselves as guardians for the next generation. One of the things we have done is planted 3,500 native trees and created a new woodland at Top of the Woods, with the help of our guests.
Here’s the story of how we got there.....
After 20 years in the fast-paced tech sector in London, we yearned for new adventure, a simpler, more meaningful life. We wanted to put our energy and skills towards something enriching, sustainable, and on our own terms - Happily, that’s what we’ve created at our glamping and campsite at Top of the Woods, in Wales.
Sadly, a big drive for our move to Wales is we couldn’t have a family of our own. After the second failed cycle of IVF, we decided to stop rather than embark on a third round. It was devastating.
As a couple, to deal with our grief we started to look forward and make a significant change to renew our sense of purpose, excitement, and adventure. It took a long time ….
Now was the time to dream - move to Mexico? set up a micro-brewery? Running a campsite came to mind, we often escaped the city for outdoor adventures with friends and always came back invigorated full of happy memories.
On this path, we could focus on living a more sustainable life. Protecting and nurturing the natural world, making connections with new people, and spending valuable time doing the things we love together.
Plus we now have the chance to create our extended fur family! our 2 dogs, 1 magnificent cat, 3 adorable kune-kune pigs and the chicken ladies who keep us supplied with lovely free range eggs.
Penrallt Farm - The "Wild Card" in Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire became our new home of choice. This unspoiled part of West Wales has it all and is perfect for eco-tourism - the best beaches in the UK, the coastal national park, the starry, starry, dark skies… It’s simply stunning.
After lots of research, we planned a recce of six suitable properties, in Wales. At the last minute I noticed a new listing, Penrallt Farm. This 'wild card' didn’t meet our brief, but it caught my eye! It was love at first sight.
Jon & I remember driving down the single-track lane from the main road, with the lush green overhang of trees and an amazing view opening out before us. As we pulled into the yard, Jon and I had already started talking about it as if this was ours!
There was no established business on-site, 27 acres of overgrown land, a house crying out for TLC, and barns needing urgent restoration! On the flip side, it had its own woodland, the views took our breath away, and it won our hearts.
Penrallt Farm (translates from Welsh to Top of the Woods) had chosen us. It was the start of our adventure to bring this beautiful but neglected Georgian dairy farm back to life and forge the next chapter in our story.
Getting our hands dirty and our first guests!
As with all dreams, much of it is not based on reality!! The first few years were pretty tough, but incredible too.
There was a massive learning curve with no guidebook to tell us how to do things. We were sooooo naive, but we had a dream to make happen, whilst continuing our corporate day jobs to pay the bills (on and off for 3 years!)
That first year we invited guests to the campsite before feeling fully prepared. We had no hot water, an upcycled washing machine drum as a campfire and solar shower bags for hot showers! But it was a fun experience for our guests (and us), and we were hooked.
From those early years, we haven’t looked back. We have expanded our accommodation to offer eco luxury glamping with the Safari Lodges, Pioneer Camps, Nature Domes, campervan pitches and meadow camping, with lots of room to run wild.
Glamping wedding festival
Love is always in the air at Top of the Woods. This special place has inspired quite a few marriage proposals. (Is there something in the water?) After we’d settled into our new home and life, we decided to make things official and tie the knot.
We couldn’t think of a better place for our wedding party - which, turned into a 3-day festival. (Better than Glastonbury, for sure!)
After the ceremony in Cardigan our friends and family joined us for our glamping and camping festival. No wedding presents for us, we just wanted time with our tribe in our own perfect little corner of West Wales. Lots of our mates contributed personal touches from DJ sets, face-painting to brewing ales for the wedding, it was a super special weekend.
The journey continues…
As Top of the Woods has grown into the award-winning eco campsite it is today we will keep to our values by bringing people together to relax and be free, connect with each other, the community, and the wild natural space.
We will continue to build local partnerships and new experiences in nature to be enjoyed by our guests. Such as our Find Your Wild holidays or our new team building experience, Ocean Connected (coming soon!). We continue to be inspired by our guests to bring together celebration groups, wellbeing retreats and fun filled weekends, such as our sausage dog festival.
From tree planting and meadow restorations to beach cleans, we will strive to enrich and protect our natural environment. To create new experiences for people to be more involved, fall in love with nature and the benefits it gives to wildlife and themselves. This way we can better understand how to minimise our impact and be active in protecting and bring new wildlife spaces for future generations.
Our aim is to bring you unique enriching and sustainable holidays and experiences in nature that you will love, we look forward to welcoming guests back season after season to be part of the Top of the Woods tribe!
