Cwtch Glamping Shepherds Huts

Shepherds huts with alpacas, near Abergavenny

Cwtch Glamping is a small field of shepherds huts about three miles south of Abergavenny, and there are alpacas in it. They come over while you are eating and stand at the table until you notice them. Each hut sleeps two. Guests on Booking.com score it 9.7 out of 10 from 49 reviews and give the location full marks.

Inside the green huts

A curved pine ceiling over white boarded walls with a green painted dado running round. The bed is made up in white on a timber base with drawers underneath it, and a maroon futon sofa sits in front of a wall-mounted electric fire with a flame effect along it. Three framed orchid prints hang on the boards. A tall window at the end looks straight out over green country, so the field is what you wake up to.

The kitchen and the shower

A black worktop runs along one wall with a stainless sink and mixer tap, a kettle and a white under-counter fridge beneath. It is a kitchenette rather than a kitchen — enough for breakfast, tea and a simple supper, but you will want to eat out or bring something ready for the evening. There is a private shower, so you are not sharing with the field, a hot tub outside, and an electric fire that warms the hut before you have taken your coat off. Abergavenny has more good places to eat than a town that size has any right to.

The huts and the alpacas

The huts are painted soft green with a white front door, two white-framed sash windows and a lantern between them, and each has a wooden picnic table on the mown grass alongside. One stands next to a raised platform built from horizontal logs with a handrail and steps up to it. The herd — six of them, in brown, fawn and black — graze the same grass, and there is a farmhouse and open country on the far side of the field. Alpacas are curious rather than pushy: they will walk up to the table, put their ears forward and look at you for a while, and then wander off again. They are curious rather than pushy, and they are the reason most people book twice.

The Blorenge and Keeper’s Pond

The flat-topped hill west of here, above Llanfoist, is the Blorenge, and the run up onto it is one of the best short drives in the county. Near the top is Keeper’s Pond, a small dark pool dug to serve the ironworks below, with parking beside it and a view down over the Usk valley. From there a path drops into a great bowl in the hillside that everyone calls the Punchbowl, a hollow of old beech trees round a pond. Up on the ridge is the grave of Foxhunter, the horse Sir Harry Llewellyn rode to a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics; the rider’s own ashes were scattered beside it.

Getting here

Abergavenny lies three miles north and holds the market, the shops and the supermarkets. Its station takes trains between Newport and Hereford. Usk is eight miles the other way. The lane in is narrow, so mind the last half mile.

Good to know

How many does each hut sleep? Two.

Are there really alpacas? Yes, grazing the same field.

Is the shower private? Yes.

Is there a hot tub? Yes.

Is there heating? Yes, a wall-mounted electric fire in each hut.

Is there a kitchen? A kitchenette with a sink, a fridge and a kettle.

How far is Abergavenny? About three miles north.

What does it cost? From around £125 a night for two.