Our philosophy at Ling’s Meadow is to promote a sustainable way of living and have as little impact on our environment as possible. With that in mind, we try to reuse or re-purpose equipment and supplies to save the energy of creating new ones, or reduce the environmental costs of transport by buying locally where we can. Where this is not possible (or if I am honest, where I have not stuck to my principles and then regretted it!) we aim to buy new things that can be recycled. It was not always possible to stick to this rule when we were setting up the campsite but I aim to use these principles more and more over the next few years when replacing equipment.
This does mean that we will have an ever more eclectic mix of furniture, cups, plates, cutlery, crochet blankets etc etc but I can promise that they will all have been lovingly homemade or gathered from local charity shops, our amazing local antique shops Risby Barn and Past and Present, and Gazes auction in Diss. If you visit us on a Friday or Saturday I can recommend a trip to Gazes – the thrill of bidding on a stack of metal buckets or a box full of terracotta plant pots is actually quite addictive, and you can often grab a bargain and give an item a new loving home in the process.
My latest haul of items to furnish the bell tents and shepherds hut include three beautiful secondhand crocheted blankets, a teapot from our local Each charity shop, a bread board, corkscrew and bread knife from the boxes of household misfits at Risby Barn and a Cath Kidstonish cushion from the St Nicholas Hospice Shop in Bury St Edmunds. I am very pleased to give them all a new home and raise a little bit of money for our local charities too!