Read our story here of how & why went from being city slickers to country bumpkins running a 5* glamping site.
One of the most frequently asked questions from our guests is: “how did you end up here and doing this?”
So this is our story of how we went from urban living In Manchester to country bumpkins running a 5-star glamping site in Chester Cheshire on what used to be a fishing complex!
This whole thing all started when we met at a camp fire at V festival in 2001. We were good friends for a few years before we started dating. Danny ran a successful dental laboratory, and Sarah was working in advertising sales for Yellow Pages. We worked long hours and enjoyed living a comfortable lifestyle.
We bought a house together in 2007/8 just as the banks were facing a financial crash. Great timing, right? Things were just about manageable, and life was good until we had two bereavements very close to each other; Danny lost his dad in February, and Sarah lost her mum in September. While we didn’t know it at the time, this was the big catalyst for the changes in our future lives, as it does for so many others.
After some soul searching, we realised that we wanted fewer material things and more family time. So, with a recently moved-in Mum and a new child, we set off to find a house in the country that would suit all of us. We did find a perfect house, it just happened to be on a four-lake fishing complex! We invested everything we had and cut out every luxury we could. We ran the business as a fishery for five years, until the profits weren’t worth the commercial license.
Now all of a sudden, we had 10 acres of land with 4 lakes and nothing to do with them! This led us to start learning about glamping. We were perfectly located to get into Chester for a day of sightseeing with the local train station just a few minutes’ walk away, a really great pub serving amazing food also within walking distance, and the amazing Delamere forest just up the road.
We realised that other sites just didn’t have this amazing location, coupled with the forest and lake thing we had going on. We attended the trade shows, met with experts, and approached the local planning department with our ideas.
We got our hands dirty to cut costs, and bought the rustiest, dirtiest digger ever seen (we affectionally named her Waynetta after the Kathy Burke Character in the 90’s). All the beautiful landscaping and pitches that you see today were created by Danny with a lot of help from our good friend, Stewart family, and of course, Waynetta.
We worked tirelessly late into the night to get Lloyds Meadow Glamping ready to welcome our first guests in July 2019. Our photographer, Neil Langan, captured our newly created glamping site just right! did. We opened the last week of July 2019 and, even with COVID-19 in 2020, have seen busier seasons every year. We’ve been honored to hold a consistent 5-star rating and we In 2021, we added the cutest pygmy goats, Cookie and Crumble,, who both have been a big hit with our guests.
Lloyds Meadow Glamping is a chilled-out, adult-only glamping sight that will give you plenty of wildlife (think ducks, moor, hens, buzzards and rabbits) with a picturesque setting of forest and a lake. Yet, you still get your creature comforts, such as log burners, canvas tents, and civilization (when you want it.) For the ultimate outdoor experience to show you just how glamorous nature and camping can be, you couldn’t ask for anything more!
