safaris

JUST one hour into our safari, we’ve hit the jackpot!

“Look, you can just make out its outline,” our guide Dinuka shouts, as he passes his binoculars to me and my boyfriend Andy.

Standing on a grass bank surrounded by water, a majestic elephant comes into focus.

As we approach to get a better look, I feel like I’ve just stepped into a David Attenborough documentary.

This reservoir in Sri Lanka’s Gal Oya Valley National Park is home to an abundance of wildlife – we also spot crocodiles basking in the water, a herd of buffalo, eagles and a host of other birds.

With only four tourist boats allowed out on the water at a time, it feels very much like the nature in this national park is being protected.

ON TRACK

New Eurostar rules to make travelling by train to Europe MUCH easier

SI YA

Jet2 boss reveals the three holiday spots that Brits are booking over Spain

And from colonial cities to mountainous tea plantations, vast jungles and sandy beaches, everywhere we turn on this stunning island, there’s wonder to behold.

Valley High

We begin our trip in Kandy, Sri Lanka’s second-largest city and home to nearly 1.5 million people, plus a riot of cars, buses, tuk-tuks and scooters.

Mountbatten Bungalow, a 15-minute drive away from the bustle, was the hillside hideaway of Lord Louis Mountbatten during WW2 and is steeped in history.

It’s also an oasis of calm, with vistas of rolling hills, space for just 26 guests, Victorian trinkets and a swanky infinity pool overlooking the valley.

High tea, £12, is served on the deck and it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever eaten a cucumber sandwich.

Double rooms here cost from £143 B&B.

Our driver, Nuwan, recommends the nearby Temple Of The Sacred Tooth Relic, as a must-see, and we’re so glad we take his advice.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s well worth the £5 entry fee as we look on in awe at the intricate Kandyan architecture and one of the holiest shrines in Buddhism, which houses the canine tooth of Gautama Buddha (Sridaladamaligawa.lk).

Tranquili-tea

Meanwhile, sitting amid marvellous mountains a two-hour drive away, the Tea & Experience Factory is a hotel unlike any I’ve stayed in before.

With the clouds rolling in, the surroundings are hauntingly atmospheric and, as the name suggests, this is a former tea factory built in the 1800s.

This stylish sleepover still has a small working factory showing how tea is produced, and from picking the leaves to seeing them being ground down in the various machines still in operation, it’s fascinating to find out how our daily cuppa is created.

The hotel also offers free guided waterfall treks with plenty of gorgeous photo stops in the lush landscape.

Double rooms cost from £114 B&B.

Jungle is Massive

Our favourite stop is still to come.

Three days spent at Wild Glamping Gal Oya is nothing short of a dream, and is where we spot the Sri Lankan elephant on our boat safari, which costs £85 per person.

Tents here have air-con, electrical sockets, huge comfy beds and alfresco bathrooms with waterfall showers.

A swimming pool sits in the middle of the camp with a breathtaking mountain backdrop – and with no phone reception, we fully embrace off-grid living.

The Veddas, one of Sri Lanka’s last remaining indigenous groups, work closely with the camp.

The first-known aboriginal people of the country, they were once forest dwellers, foraging, hunting and living in the jungle and caves.

These days, they make up less than 1% of Sri Lanka’s population and are a dying community who wish to teach others about how they live.

Gunabandilaaththo has a very simple life and shows us the ways in which his ancestors used to live, from mud huts to rustling up a traditional meal.

It’s an eye-opening two hours, £30 per couple, and a real honour to learn about his culture.

That night, we indulge in a Sri Lankan lamb curry and rice, £8, with creamy green beans, dal and coconut sambal, and chat about all we’ve learned.

Glamping tents at Gal Oya cost from £191 B&B.

Girl Power

Our last stop takes us to Amba Yaalu, set on the tranquil banks of the Kandalama Lake and the country’s first hotel fully managed and staffed by women.

Sitting next to a mango farm, rooms here look out over a glorious reservoir and the ancient Pidurangala Rock, which from some angles, resembles a person lying down.

Each room comes with an outdoor Jacuzzi bath to take in the views while soaking in bubbles.

Stays here cost from £121 B&B.

Sigiriya (also known as Lion Rock), is half an hour’s drive away and famous for its 200m-high granite column topped with the ruins of a 5th-century royal palace.

It’s a two-hour steep climb, but the views at the top are worth it.

Entry costs £26 (Sigiriyafortress.com).

Once back down on more solid ground, it’s the perfect time to reward ourselves with a Lion Beer, £2.50, from a street vendor and watch as the sun sets on an adventure just as golden.

The scene is entirely black, white, grey and silver. It is cold, unusually dark and a film of ice is forming on the lake. I’m sitting in an unlit wooden sauna, alone, in immense silence. The only noise is the soft ticking of the stove as the heat rises. Across the water are ghostly silver birches and dark pines. Above them, Orion’s Belt shines bright. This vivid experience feels like midwinter in Canada, Finland or anywhere else about 60 degrees north. So it’s bizarre to know I’m a few miles south-west of Great Yarmouth.

Fritton Lake is an anomaly. Like the Broads to the north, this deceptively big, sinuous lake was largely created by medieval peat-digging, but it’s nothing like its Norfolk cousins. Set in a sandy, hilly landscape of heaths and pines, the northernmost outpost of the wildlife-rich strip of sandy heathlands running up the Suffolk coast, the lake is deep and two miles long but so hidden by trees that many people don’t know of its existence.

Over the past five years, Fritton Lake has been transformed by a rewilding programme. Landowner Hugh Somerleyton is the co-founder of WildEast, a now-national movement encouraging people to pledge to “wild” at least 20% of their garden, park, playground or farm. Fritton and its surrounds represent Somerleyton’s 25% rewilding contribution, while he farms the rest of his 2,020-hectare (5,000-acre) estate regeneratively.

I’ve brought my family for a winter weekend seeking wildness in far-eastern England. Arriving after nightfall, my first impression is simply darkness. Anything as suburban as a lit walkway or illuminated sign is not found here. But we locate our self-catering cottage, one of a range of accommodation options that includes chic wooden cabins (some with hot tubs) and B&B rooms in the cosy pub turned clubhouse that is now is both a holiday destination and a high-end members’ club.

The highlight of our first night is a (very) quiet private 30-minute session in the lake’s magical floating sauna. Between pub and sauna are courts and pitches for tennis, basketball, football, cricket, croquet, pétanque and pickleball. Down by the lake are canoes, kayaks, rowing boats and paddleboards. Passing the heated outdoor 22-metre swimming pool with fire pits at either end is like stepping through a set for a film about a 1960s Cliveden pool party featuring Christine Keeler, except there is a solitary swimmer doing laps as the pool steams alluringly in the chill night air.

The next morning, I wake up to another silence so deep it might swallow me. Huge flocks of jackdaws and rooks fly overhead as we stroll through rewilded grassland to the pub for a hearty breakfast. Afterwards, my son Ted and I set out on a Fritton “safari”. Our guide, Matthew, is a fast-talking, east London-raised botanist-horticulturist-entomologist-mycologist. We jump in an old-fashioned, cream-coloured motorboat and putter slowly across the lake, which is superb for swimming and also enjoyed by pike, eels and, in winter, teals, shelducks and egrets. In summer, an osprey occasionally hunts for fish here, while “all the owls” – little, short-eared, long-eared, tawny and barn – are seen nearby alongside six endangered amphibian species.

On the far side of the lake, the wildlife area is only open to those on guided tours (and Scout groups). We climb into an open-sided 1976 Austrian Pinzgauer 4WD and Matthew bumps us through the woods. Amid last year’s bracken, we spy an enormous shiny black shape slumped under a pine. A hippo? Creeping closer, we find that the shape is a pair of huge black pigs that Somerleyton has “retired” to the woods. They flick floppy ears out of their eyes to examine us. Their rootling mimics wild boar lost to this landscape, disturbing the ground and assisting wildflower germination; former arable fields are filled with oxeye daisies in summer. We admire the long-horned Highland cattle roaming free, while a buzzard cries in the sky above.

Ted spots a muntjac and a fallow deer, and then Matthew screeches to a halt with excitement. “King Conan’s sons!” he whispers. There, crossing our paths are two magnificent red deer stags, although apparently not quite as magnificent as King Conan himself. “They are the princes,” whispers Matthew. They observe us, seemingly unafraid, from 15 metres away.

On our return across the lake after an otherworldly three-hour experience, two kingfishers pirouette around our boat, shining iridescent orange and turquoise against the dark water.

My kids are mortified when I arrive at the pub for dinner wearing my Dryrobe, but if it is socially acceptable anywhere, it must be here. I need it for another sauna session that follows an amazing steak from a menu emphasising local/seasonal food, with good veggie options too. An owl calls on the walk back to the cottage.

On Sunday morning, I rise before dawn to explore Carlton Marshes, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust nature reserve that’s a 20-minute drive away. The sunrise fills the vast sky with pink, and I have the seemingly endless marshes of the Waveney to myself, silent reeds silvered by frost. A Chinese water deer watches me, its teddy bear ears twitching, as I circle round the reserve, which is a haven for rare dragonflies and the spectacular fen raft spider in spring and summer. Although this coast is dominated by the surprisingly large conurbation of Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and surrounding villages, Gorleston-on-Sea’s sandy beach offers another great stroll with seabirds and salty air.

Later that day, while my wife, Lisa, does a yoga class, I head for a farewell sauna and find the open session is packed with a friendly crowd of regulars who say they wish Somerleyton would build another sauna or two. I pop outside and duck into the lake, cracking ice as I gasp with the delicious cold shock.

We head home much less frantically than we arrived – a sign of the nourishment provided by a weekend of painterly light, stripped-back landscapes, cold water, warm hospitality and the gorgeous avian soundtrack of this wild, wintery east.

The trip was provided by Fritton Lake. Clubhouse rooms from £130; two-bed cabins from £275.