GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND - Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World - page 18

018 photoGRaph SeabiRdS
oN SkomeR iSlaNd,
pembRokeShiRe

019 mildeN hall, Suffolk

Your first impression as you turn off the main
road up the long drive to Milden Hall is of a
typically grand country house in the heart of
Suffolk. And that's what it is, but with a twist:
the fifth-generation owner Christopher and his
wife Juliet have turned their sixteenth-century
estate into a sprawling, back-to-nature, family-
friendly playground.
Each of the three period rooms in the main
farmhouse caters for two on a B&B basis. The
farmhouse is a listed building so the rooms
- large and beautifully furnished with antiques,
prints and pencil drawings - share the same
bathroom. All have wide views of the walled
garden and wild-flower meadows of the estate.
Meanwhile, groups of up to 22 can self-cater in a
wonderfully eccentric restored Tudor cartlodge,
where you eat at a huge banquet table and sleep
in Tudor oak beds.
In the farmhouse, a vast wood-burner
fuelled by coppiced wood heats the large but
surprisingly cosy living room as well as the
bedrooms. There's a comprehensive compost and
recycling programme, and the excellent breakfast
(bantam eggs, sausages, fruit compote) is sourced
either from the farm or local suppliers.
Juliet, an ecologist, has a “family activity pack”
with over fifty suggestions for things kids can
do, such as pond-dipping, leaf-sewing, moth-
identifying and den-making in the woods. She
also runs one- or two-hour guided nature trails
on the estate. Adults, meanwhile, can forage for
mushrooms, play tennis and explore the nearby
medieval villages of Lavenham, Long Melford
and Kersey.

The sky is perfect blue and the ground covered
with wild flowers; overhead, flurries of kittiwakes
circle while gulls wheel and dive among the
cliffs. The National Nature Reserve of Skomer
Island - a 20min boat ride off the Pembrokeshire
coast - is one of the best places in Britain to
view seabirds, especially puffins. Though their
numbers have dwindled elsewhere, a visionary
sustainability project at Skomer has raised the
puffin population here: there are now some six
thousand breeding pairs on the island. So if
you're after that elusive picture of a puffin with
a silver sand eel clamped in its beak, this tiny
island merits a stop.
Skomer is the second largest of the
Pembrokeshire islands and also home to
guillemots, razorbills and Manx shearwaters
(to list just a few), as well as insects and small
mammals, including the elusive Skomer vole.
There are day-visits out to the island from
Martin's Haven, but stay the night and you'll be
treated to the nightly call of thousands of Manx
shearwaters as they fly home under the cover of
darkness.
Farmhouse accommodation on Skomer has
recently been given a green makeover by
the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales,
with tourist income put towards the island's
conservation. Rainwater is harvested and hot
showers come courtesy of a combination of wind
and solar power - with enough electricity to keep
batteries charged so you can review your day's
pictures for as long as you want.

Need to know Bikes can be rented free of charge.
The nearest train station is Sudbury, from where it's
a 15min taxi ride to Milden (clarify that you want
The Hall at Milden and not the town of Mildenhall).
For rates, availability and more on activities and
getting there see W www.thehall-milden.co.uk;
T [phone].

Need to know From St David's catch the No.
400 Puffin Shuttle bus to Marloes and Martin's
Haven, from where the ferry runs to Skomer (1
April-31 Oct). Ferry info: W www.dale-sailing.co.uk;
T [phone]. Further information on
Skomer Island and accommodation is at W www.
welshwildlife.org/skomerIntro_en.link.