The only UK nature reserve where you can spend the night
Above the Isle of Sheppey, a starling murmuration arches and contorts, painting the sky with black brushstrokes.
This corner of north Kent, with its pylons and concrete flyovers, is not the most obvious site for one of the UK's most important nature reserves.
The belching factories on the Swale, a Thames Estuary tidal channel, are a peculiar fanfare to wildlife conservation. But turn inland to the coastal marshland of Elmley island, scored with water channels, and urban life recedes within minutes.
Here, down a dirt road, the 3,300 acres of grazing and salt marsh that make up Elmley Nature Reserve are home to some of the UK's most threatened birds, including lapwings, harriers and redshanks. A pivotal national site for breeding wading birds, it is a key spot for raptors, owls, voles and hares, as well as rare bees, dragonflies and flora.
Elmley is also the only family-owned and managed farm in the UK to be a National Nature Reserve. Philip and Corinne Merricks took on the land as tenants in the 1980s to expand their grazing while farming on Romney Marsh.
Passionate about what he sees as a natural relationship between conservation and farming, Philip pushed back on agricultural policy at the time that encouraged practices such as chemical pesticides and ripping up hedgerows to increase yields.
"We have to provide the ecology to allow the land to thrive," he explains. "The wildlife all belongs to a food chain, from the largest bird of prey to the most microscopic invertebrate, and if one strand gets taken out, then everything is affected. Farming is land management and conservation is just another form of that."
The approach was successful and, in 1991, Elmley was designated a National Nature Reserve in recognition of its biodiversity. It remained solely a reserve and farm until 2013, when the Merricks' youngest daughter Georgina and husband Gareth Fulton returned from an army posting in Cyprus, putting forward ambitious diversification plans that included overnight tourism at Elmley.
Philip and Corinne had never lived on the farm, but Georgina and Gareth decided to move into an off-grid cottage beside the then-derelict 18th-century farmhouse – which was two miles from the nearest road – to start the business.
"We were newly married, changing careers, and I don't think we'd quite thought through the scale of the challenges," says Gareth. "But sometimes jumping in is the best way because you can paralyse yourself asking, 'What about this or that?'"
Getting permission for overnight tourism on a nature reserve from Natural England, the government's advisory body for the natural environment, was challenging – although the farm was already a popular birdwatching spot.
They started with two huts and grew the idea over the next seven years, along with their family. Today, it's the only reserve in the UK where you can stay – in shepherd's huts or bell tents – and even get married.
Watching their children, Ellie, Barney and Anna, enjoy the space was a throwback to Georgina's own time at Elmley as a child. "My earliest memories are of playing on frozen ditches here in winter," she says. "My children have had the same privilege. They know the names of all the birds because they've grown up here."
While Philip is still active in Elmley's evolution, Gareth now manages the reserve, while Georgina oversees hospitality. To support Elmley's biodiversity, water levels and ditches are monitored by Gareth and his team. Ground predators are kept out and visitors confined to paths, so they don't disturb the birds. On the marshes, which have been untouched by chemicals for 50 years, insect life flourishes and the farm remains off-grid, with the only power coming from solar panels.
The landscape is a kaleidoscope: from winter's flurries as wildfowl and waders return from north-east Europe and the Arctic to spring's green explosion, symphonic dawn chorus and boxing hares, seen from a Land Rover tour with head guide Simon or just on a wander through the reserve, stopping at its hides.
With autumn comes parched grass from hotter months, grazed by 700 cows and sheep, that burnishes the Elmley "savannah". As temperatures drop, whimbrels and green sandpipers stop to rest on the way to Africa, barn owls feed crying owlets and marsh harriers hover over unsuspecting prey.
Being privately owned allows the couple to be more flexible in how they manage the reserve day to day. "We can test methods in different areas and bring in experts to help," Georgina says. Such agility has enabled a number of notable successes, including a curlew recovery programme.
The farm itself is unrecognisable from those early days. The cottage is now used for spa treatments; the farmhouse, renovated in 2019, can be rented; and the barn hosts weddings. The shepherd's huts now number eight, tucked into the landscape with outdoor bathtubs and wall-to-floor bedroom windows. To watch birds wheel at sunrise is to have a private audience with a bigger world.
After the Covid pandemic, Gareth and Georgina moved to a village 20 minutes away from the reserve, but their life still revolves around Elmley.
The reserve draws thousands of visitors a year, as well as providing jobs for local people. Sustainability is top of the agenda. "We are on the frontline for migratory birds and wildlife and there has been a huge impact from climate change in the species we now observe," says Gareth.
The reserve is seeing birds that, 10 years ago, people would only have seen in the middle of France, such as the castle egret and the purple heron.
The couple are also facing more frequent and intense storms, with saltwater coming over the sea walls and onto the land. "If it happens a lot, the habitat will change," continues Gareth. "There isn't much high-quality wet grassland left in the UK – the habitat for ground-nesting birds – and nowhere else for them to go."
Pushing back the tide and encroaching human footprint makes reserves – and the dedication of families like the Merricks and Fultons – ever more important for the birds that rely on them. "In the long-term, we need more land that is managed better for nature," says Gareth, pointing out a lapwing overhead, "so that these species have space to live and breathe in the future."
For more information about how to book, visit elmleynaturereserve.co.uk.
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