Summary (by AI): I thoroughly enjoyed my rustic "nearly wild" camping trip at Vallis Veg in Frome, finding the beautiful surroundings and local cider well worth the stay despite a close encounter with a massive thunderstorm.
Blog: Years ago, I started getting interested in wild camping. Or rather, my own version of it. I don’t really do proper wild camping, mainly because of how I like to travel. First of all, I need to have a fire so I can cook myself a proper meal and have a drink. Dragging all of that cooking paraphernalia—especially heavy cast-iron pans—along with a supply of drinks and a comfy place to sit, generally means I’m using a car to get to where I'm going.
If I'm going to have a fire, I also want to make sure I’m allowed to do so. That led me to discover a category of campsites known as "nearly wild." These aren’t those horrible, soulless fields where you pitch a tent right on top of a million other people. They are tucked away in nature, usually without the heavy facilities of major sites, giving you that authentic rustic feel.
A few years back, I stumbled across one of these sites online called Vallis Veg, located just over in Frome.
Frome has always been an interesting spot to me. I used to catch the train back to Henley from London Paddington all the time. For some random reason, there was a train—the 6:07 PM, I think—that went all the way to Frome. I remember looking at the departure board thinking, what on earth is it going there for? It’s right in the middle of Somerset. I’m sure it’s a lovely old town, but it’s hardly Bath or Plymouth.
Anyway, Vallis Veg caught my eye because it looked like the perfect "nearly wild" setup, and I’d been meaning to visit for years. When the ABC process came along, I figured, yep, this is the perfect excuse.
We’ve been in the middle of a mini-heatwave here in mid-May, so the timing was absolutely spot on. The exact same thing happened to me last year when I ended up down in Sussex, so I knew I had to take advantage of the weather.
The campsite turned out to be exactly what you’d hope for. It’s run by two "young-old" ladies who focus on sustainable vegetable farming, and they’ve carved out a bit of their land for semi-wild camping. I ended up with a charming pitch nestled right under the canopy of some trees. I’d brought my hammock tent along, and as luck would have it, there were three trees positioned just perfectly for me to wedge the hammock into. It was fantastic.
Once I set up camp, I took myself off for a quick pint. I stumbled into a cracking local pub—The Talbot Inn. Sitting there just underlined how incredibly posh Somerset has become. You’re in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and you just stumble across these fantastic, stylish places.
I got back to camp and started prepping tea. On the menu was a slow-cooked pork belly and beef cider bean stew. If I do say so myself, it was absolutely tremendous. I used a local scrumpy from Hecks Cider in Street—real, full-on Somerset cider. I let the pork belly cook for ages, happily enjoying the rest of the cider while I waited. Sitting there chilling in front of the campfire in the warmth of the evening was perfect. It was so mild I didn’t even need extra layers, but it cooled down just enough to be comfortable. Absolute bliss.
Eventually, I climbed into my hammock tent. Because the night was so warm, I hadn't bothered putting up the fly sheet.
At about one o'clock in the morning, I woke up to these incredible, low rolls of thunder and flashes of lightning. It went on forever. It was bizarre because I couldn't quite tell where the storm was coming from—it felt like it was directly all around me. Miraculously, I was still completely dry.
I did get up in the dark to jerry-rig the fly sheet over the hammock. It wasn't my best engineering work, but as it turned out, I didn't actually need it. When I woke up in the morning and turned on the radio, the news was reporting that the Southwest had been absolutely battered by some of the most incredible thunderstorms of the year. I definitely dodged a bullet there—sleeping completely exposed hanging from a tree in the middle of a wood during a major lightning storm isn't exactly textbook safety, but I got away with it.
I woke up fresh, cooked myself a lovely bacon sandwich, and packed up.
Right now, I'm dictating this while walking through Vallis Vale. If I understand the history correctly, it's an old, ancient quarry. You can still see the remnants of the old stone kilns scattered all the way through the woods, but nature has completely reclaimed the rest. It is absolutely beautiful down here—a total dog-walking paradise. I’ve already run into three or four dogs, including a beautiful, lovely little beagle.
All in all, I’d highly recommend Vallis Veg for a bit of wild camping. It’s dirt cheap, too. It was £10 for the night, plus another £10 to park my car—which they claimed was a "sustainability tax." I thought that was a slightly cheeky way to frame it, but honestly, £20 for a night in a place like this? You can't complain about that.
The Map: