Little Farthingloe Farm, Dover

During a week’s stay at my Mum’s caravan in Deal, Kent, back in March, the first Sunday fell on Mother’s Day and before heading out for a lovely dinner, we wanted to enjoy some of the local countryside first.

The day before we had headed to Betteshanger Park and carried out a nature trail, which had gone down brilliantly with Bridget (3.5years), Beatrice had only just learned to walk, so she had been a buggy participant.

Bridget wanted more of the same, so we looked up some local nature trails and found Little Farthingloe Farm on the Folkestone Road in Dover, just a fifteen minute drive from Deal, which we thought would hit the spot nicely.

Small, but perfectly formed would be an adequate description of Little Farthingloe, which boasted a ton of sheep, a donkey and a couple of pony’s, which kept Bridget and Beatrice entertained for quite some time. Bridget really enjoyed stroking the ponys, and they were quite tame, if a little unkempt.

Little Farthingloe Farm

There was also an adventure play area which was great for Bridget, but a little too old for Bea.

The ‘woodland trail’ is said to take 30 minutes in total, but it took us closer to an hour, what with stopping to look at various things along the way and the fact there was some quite thick mud due to the cold and wet weather in the days leading up to Mother’s Day. Luckily Bridget was sporting her wellies.

The trail begins by an absolutely mammoth open grassy hill, which was quite fun to climb actually, and once up the top you had spectacular views over the local countryside and the animals in the fields. 

Mothers Day hike at Little Farthingloe Farm, Kent

As we headed into the trail, there was a lot to see along the way. I had made some ‘nature trail checklists’ for Bridget and Bea, which had things such as mushrooms, spider’s webs, animal footprints, pine cones and so on, and we happily trudged along most of the trail stopping to tick off things from our list. 

There was also a bug hotel – which fascinated Bridget, even though its’ rooms were mostly vacant at that time of the year.

We found a few little dens along the way too. 

Little Farthingloe Farm Woodland Trail

Towards the end of the trail, it gets somewhat trickier to navigate. I’m sure if it hadn’t been wet underfoot and muddy, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but as Glen was carrying Bea, Bridget and I were buddied up. I do have a bit of a tendency to fall over anyway, regardless of mud, so it was almost inevitable it would happen at some point, and unfortunately it happened as we went downhill in amongst a load of mud, twigs, and trees. I took Bridget down too, till we were both flat on our bums in the mud. Absolutely hilarious – but Bridget was beside herself now, and petrified to come down most of the rest of the trail. It certainly made for a talking and laughing point for the rest of the day, and we were both smothered in mud.

There is a lovely little tea room at LittleFarthingloe Farm, which we didn’t get the chance to enjoy as I didn’t fancy covering their seats in mud, but I do chuckle thinking about the bundles of people who were enjoying a Mother’s Day slice of cake and cup of tea who probably heard Bridget’s screams from up the hill.

We had a lovely hour and a half at LittleFarthingloe Farm, there is no charge for entry and it’s a nice spot for family fun. It’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area, just watch out when coming down the woodland trail!

Homemade Nature Trail

If you're keen to make your own family nature trail - all I did for mine, was find pictures of each of the following and pop onto a sheet of paper - you can do this any time of the year and add to it depending on where you're going and what you're likely to see.

• Mushrooms growing
• Two stones that look the same
• Animal footprints
• A feather
• A pine cone
• Birds
• Squirrel
• Berries growing wild
• Spiders web
• A brown leaf
• A log on the ground
• Butterfly
• Ladybird
• A pond or stream
• A tree tunnel
• A rabbit hole