You can go glamping - glamorous camping - Mediaeval style in the grounds of Warwick Castle, with entertainment including archery, a Jester's School and Knight's school.

Overlooking the river Avon and surrounded by wooded parkland, the site in the castle grounds features the circular Mediaeval themed tents you would see on jousting fields in the movies. They are fully fitted, ready-to-sleep and the King's Luxury Tent even has a 4-poster bed.



The tents go up when the site opens in April and remain in place all season. Fully fitted with wooden floors, they have conical roofs that shed rain around the periphery of the tent and, as there is no provision for drainage, the medium to heavy clay soil does become very wet.

When the time comes in October to remove the tents the areas that have been covered by the wooden floors and coconut matting since April are left as bare, wet mud. These have to be brought back to grass as quickly as possible, to meet the planning conditions for the glamping use of the historic and protected parkland.

Specialists in deep aeration treatment, Terrain Aeration returned to Warwick Castle for the second year to treat and help restore the area.

The first job needed once the tents were out of the way was to clear the surface water and ease any compaction in the soil that had been covered by the floors and pathways. The area was too wet and muddy for Terrain Aeration's wheeled Terralift machines to gain traction and so the Tracker Terralift was used with up to a 100 metre long air pipe deployed to allow the compressor to remain on the main vehicle route through the entire site and not get bogged down.

The Terralift treatment injects compressed air into the soil as much as a metre deep to decompact, aerate and inject seaweed across the affected areas. The seaweed sticks to the walls of the fractures, swelling and contracting and keeping the fissures open. The process clears surface water areas, helping to dry up any mud, leaving the area ready for surface preparation and the replacement of the missing grass.