There's a tiny hidden village in Wales where everyone lives in fairytale huts dotted around the woodland

Wales Online

a day ago

There's a tiny hidden village in Wales where everyone lives in fairytale huts dotted around the woodland
From the rocky country road it's hard to pick out the village which is renowned for its tipis - but nowadays the majority of the residents live in tiny turf-roofed huts which blend into the green landscape
Peter Francis, 73, has lived at Tipi Valley in Carmarthenshire since 1983
(Image: John Myers )
The 100 or so folk of Tipi Valley in the wilds of west Wales don't have rules except for that shoes must be left at the entrance of their huts, yurts, or tipis - a steep tent made from canvas and held up by poles in their centre.
From the rocky country road leading to the nearby village of Cwmdu in Carmarthenshire it's hard to pick out the village renowned for its tipis but where nowadays the majority of the residents live in tiny turf-roofed huts which blend into the green landscape perfectly, so much so I hadn't known I'd arrived at Rik Mayes' hut until it was pointed out to me from yards away.
One of the eco-friendly huts costs around £5,000 to build and is 80% biodegradable. More efficient than the tipi, the huts have seen Tipi Valley lauded as a leading case study for sustainable and cheap living, while they are a pleasant addition to the hidden village which looks like something out of a fairytale.
The people living here - some of whom still refer to themselves as hippies - weren't always welcomed by some in Cwmdu and Llandeilo before. Search Tipi Valley on Youtube and you'll find some old news clips of farmers questioning the hippies' right to be on the land. One councillor - Roland Morgan - even claimed some businesses had "no hippies" signs in their windows.
While the residents of Tipi Valley have owned the land since 1976, the majority of the now 100 acres was purchased for agricultural usage with no planning permission for residential structures. The core issue surrounding the legitimacy of the land's use revolved around the legality of the nomadic structures on the land.
While some of the structures at the site were initially deemed unlawful any worries the Tipi Valley residents had of being turfed out were helped when Valley dweller Brig Oubridge won a landmark legal case in 2006 - after a 13-year battle - which concluded his three tents and caravan were lawful. All of the huts have now been in the Valley for more than four years without any enforcement action, and so can stay put.
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'The council came to terms with us being here many years ago while knowing our ecological mission as such was to live here very simply,' Rik, a reverend originally from London and who has lived here since 1978, tells WalesOnline from his little wooden dwelling which could be mistaken for a garden shed but inside is like a tardis comprising a bed, a sofa, a television, a tiny kitchen, a shower unit and an office space. 'They've decided to let us get on with it,' he says.
Rik Mayes in his medieval-like roundhouse hut - an eco-friendly home
(Image: John Myers )
Rik Mayes has lived at Tipi Valley since 1978 and says he intends to stay in the eco village for the rest of his life
(Image: John Myers )
Rik, 77, is at the top of the valley and is one of very few residents at Tipi who has access to a decent mobile phone signal, and so has taken on the role of a sort of de facto village receptionist. He scoffs at any suggestion he has a leading role in the community though, telling me there is no such thing.
Tipi Valley has no hierarchy with the hippies believing the land is the owner of all of us. Nobody pays rent for their dwellings other than one family who stay in a more typical cottage which was bought by the community in 1998. There is no formal vetting process either for anyone who wants to rock up and give living here a crack.
'You have to weigh up whether you can cope with the lifestyle and the climate,' Rik explains. 'That's how Tipi Valley started. We bought the land in 1976 because we wanted people to have the opportunity to come along and give it a go, and that's the way it is.
'We are unique in that sense. There are not many places in the whole of the UK now where that could happen. If you want land in the UK now you're paying a lot of money for it or you're buying a piece of farmland, for example, which is usually far too big.
'We never started with a vision or a big grand plan. This place was just built by experience. We've just saved as many pennies as we could and we've bought little pieces of land here bit by bit. Now the residents of Tipi Valley have bought 100 acres themselves.'
One hut can cost around £5,000 to build and are mostly biodegradable
(Image: John Myers )
The huts melt into the green landscape perfectly, almost hidden
(Image: John Myers )
Almost all of the residents live off grid while some - a handful - still live in tipis. Those who turn up at Tipi Valley, intrigued by a different way of living and hoping to become a permanent resident, tend to stay in the 'big lodge' - an oversized tipi where villagers meet monthly to eat and drink together and also congregate in the colder months. The big lodge is beside a stream which feeds a well where villagers get most of their water.
'People often still turn up and ask to stay here,' Rik says. 'Last week we had a guy staying in the big lodge who came so gently. He came to Swansea, booked a bed and breakfast, then caught a taxi up here and had the taxi wait for him while he came to us and asked permission if he could visit in future. I thought that was very polite. He came to visit just to ask permission to visit. A few days later he did come to visit properly and I believe he's in the big lodge at the moment.
'Another person in the big lodge turned up yesterday. He said his dad used to come here when he was young and he thinks he'd quite like to relocate here, so he's checking it out.'
When we visit the big lodge we're greeted by Emily Driver who is inside the communal tipi which is uncomfortably warm. She's here to invite villagers to her dinner party at her yurt a short walk away.
'I was in the big lodge for four months and I loved it,' Emily, 32, who arrived here on her own last year, says. 'It's quite intense to live in at first. But it's such a grounding space. It slows you down.
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'I arrived here from Leicester where I lived in the city and as soon as I got here it was a real crash. It was a huge change in speed and it was difficult to get accustomed to at first. I actually found it quite emotional.
'I remember ringing my mum crying and she said: 'Emily darling, why don't you sit down and have a cup of tea?' I shouted at her that it was so hard to even make tea in this place. But it's so good because it forces you to be patient.'
Around 100 people live at Tipi Valley. The majority of the children attend or have attended the nearby Talley School - a Welsh medium school
(Image: John Myers )
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The village offers a more simple way of life which villagers say should be regarded as the norm
(Image: John Myers )
Prior to visiting Tipi Valley for the first time Emily's grandfather had passed away, leading her to think about what she really wanted from her life. She had been a librarian in a prison before quitting her job and moving here.
She recalls: 'Before he died grandad said to me: 'Take it whilst you can.' And I decided I wanted to live like this now while I can. I quit my job, quit my flat and came here. I've been here for a year now.'
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Asked if she intends to stay here for a long time she says: 'I don't really think like that. I don't think too much about what is to come. What it is guiding me at the moment are my seeds. My seeds need to be in the ground and watered so I'm here to do that. Once the seeds have grown and I've eaten them, who knows where life will take me?'
'Once people have been here for a while we let them build a permanent dwelling instead of living in a tipi,' Rik explains. He was out of the ordinary because he lived in a tipi for 35 years - far longer than most - before moving into the hut he originally built for his sons to live in while they were at school 'so they could turn out smartly'. Most of the Tipi Valley children go to the local Talley School, a Welsh medium school meaning most of the youngsters in the valley have varying degrees of Welsh language proficiency.
Rik moved into the hut after his sons left school and then decided to move further down the valley closer to Cwmdu. 'Tipis and yurts are nomadic dwellings so we have to move them every six months to a different piece of land in the village,' he says. 'There is an art to pitching a tipi. It needs to be done in a certain way so when the rain comes the water runs down the tipi and off away from the tipi rather than back towards it.
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'In the middle of your tipi you've got your hearth and the hearth gives you heat, light, cooking, everything. You live around that with your family. On the floor around that are rushes and on top of that are sheepskins. Around the edges are your baskets for clothes, wood and toys. You have to travel light in a tipi because you'll be moving on again soon.'
The tipi called the big lodge by the villagers where newcomers live and where the locals congregate for community events
(Image: John Myers )
Emily Driver moved to the eco village from Leicester after realising she wanted to live a different life while she is young
(Image: John Myers )
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Do many people come and go? 'Of course they do,' Rik laughs. 'If they didn't go we'd have about 4,000 people living here.'
It isn't for the faint-hearted. Many people turn up believing the tipi life is the life they want, but sometimes they end up bringing the contents of their home with them and then they realise they can't hack it come the winter.
On one occasion long-time resident Peter Francis had to remove 50 wheelbarrows full of possessions which one short-term resident had left behind after realising Tipi Valley wasn't for them.
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Rik says: 'Over the years we've had no end of people wanting to live here thinking it's their dream and then during a cold wet winter they've left and left all their stuff and it can be very difficult to sort out.
'It is challenging because it's quite a small space to live in and that means one cannot have many possessions. For example, when I was bringing my children up in a tipi there could only be one toy basket and when it was full one toy had to come out for a new one to go in.
'I actually found that very beneficial for my children. They didn't have a lot and I was amazed how unpossessive my kids were. When I was a child I was possessive because I had my bedroom to myself which was like my own little empire.
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'What I am really pleased about, when I look at my whole life, is that my children were born and bred at Tipi Valley because the opportunity that afforded them was pretty unique - the opportunity to live in the wild and survive with basic means.'
The majority of the residents of Tipi Valley now live in these round huts
(Image: John Myers )
The electricity is solar powered, some of the food is grown on site in allotments, the toilets are compost loos, and the water comes from a well sourced by the stream
(Image: John Myers )
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Rik was persuaded to the valley in 1978 by a friend who had wanted him to start a school here. 'As soon as I came over the hill into the valley I knew I wanted to be here for the rest of my life,' he recalls. 'I didn't have any wanderlust to go all over the world or anything like that. I just wanted to find a place I could be freer and where I felt I belonged. I wanted to live close to nature and to bring my family up while living a life I could believe in more than I could believe in the civilisation we've got. Of course, we also need civilisation in part. We couldn't do without the NHS and roads.'
He'd lived in many towns and cities across the UK including London, Manchester, Bournemouth and Southend by the time he reached Tipi Valley when he was 31. 'I find the idea of leaving here now just ludicrous,' he says.
'All my life I've just wanted to be around nature and to not have to feel that by crossing some fence I've trespassed into someone else's land. I was brought up on Rupert Bear who lived a wonderful life in the countryside where he could go pretty well wherever he liked. And that's what I wanted.'
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Peter, a former dairy farmer who has lived here since 1983, has built his fair share of huts. His current hut, with a reciprocal frame roof and an electric induction hob which runs entirely on solar energy, is comparative luxury considering what he's lived in at Tipi Valley before.
Peter Francis has built his fair share of huts and says they're far more efficient than tipis or yurts
(Image: John Myers )
Peter believes more people need to live in the way the residents of Tipi Valley do
(Image: John Myers )
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A short walk from his hut the 73-year-old has a sizable allotment where he grows his fruit and vegetables. He also grows his own coffee.
'It's about the philosophy of simplicity - that less is more,' he says. Although he agrees with Rik that he doesn't live by that motto when it comes to ice cream.
'Before living here I was down the road in Taliaris where I was a dairy farmer. It didn't all add up, being a dairy farmer. Small dairy farms even in the 1980s didn't pay and it was also during the time of mad cow disease.
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'I used to say to my feed merchant in Llandeilo: 'Where are you getting this stuff from?' And he'd say: 'Quality stuff this is.' But it was actually dead cows I was feeding my cows on. No wonder the health problems were rife. It was all going wrong and I couldn't ever work out why. Only in retrospect did it all come out.'
He was in a tipi briefly but found one hard to live in. 'I went and spent some time in Africa and came back with the idea of living in a thatched hut instead,' he says. 'I built my first hut entirely out of materials from the valley here apart from the nails. Unfortunately that one burnt down because I left a lamp burning while I was out.'
He explains why Tipi Valley is no longer very Tipi. 'Nowadays a tipi costs maybe a couple of thousand pounds and with the canvas, under these conditions, you'd be lucky if it lasted three years. They're not very efficient.
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'So although in the summer it's a wonderful experience to live in a tipi with the focus of the fire in the middle and being wonderfully close to being outside in nature, come the winter with the wind blowing through the door and the damp and dark, it can be difficult.
'The thing about these huts is the overhang on the roof which means the walls are dry. Yurts don't have that overhang so the walls are damp when it's raining and that means everything gets a bit damp.'
A handful of residents at Tipi Valley still live in tipis
(Image: John Myers )
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The people of Tipi Valley believe we belong to the earth and the footprint of people on the earth should be as minimal as possible, hence the huts blend into the landscape and are eco-friendly
(Image: John Myers )
He tells me the hut was very cheap to build - no more than £5,000. 'So nobody needs to be homeless,' he says. 'They just need to change the planning laws.'
We are sitting in Peter's lounge area - although the hut isn't separated into rooms. It's more of a roundhouse with a kitchen area, a bed and all manner of plants. There are no corners, Peter points out proudly, so as to remove the temptation to have too much 'stuff'. There is no television but there are a few books.
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'I've not had a television since I was a boy,' he laughs. 'I prefer looking out of the window.' He's spoiled for choice here, having surrounded the hut with windows and doors which open up to create the sort of summerhouse which would sell for hundreds of pounds a week on Airbnb.
'It's funny isn't it,' he says. 'When I first came here we were considered a strange sort - beyond the pale. Wider society just didn't get us. And yet now it's become desirable. People say: 'Let's go glamping and stay in a turf-roofed hut and pay a grand a week.'
'What they didn't know then is that this life is actually normal. It's the urban, modern way of life which isn't normal, and the sooner people start downsizing the better. Otherwise we don't have a future because the way climate change is going at the moment, it isn't looking good at all.' Rik adds: 'So what you've got to do is go back to Cardiff, get a tent and go and live in the park.'