Add a sprinkling of hens, goats and ponies, and you've got a recipe for a near-perfect family adventure.
Children can take tractor rides, meet the animals (a horse, three ponies, two dwarf goats, as well as guinea pigs, rabbits and cats), collect eggs while adults can loll in one of three saunas.
(Given Bryan Ferry's embrace of all things gentrified, and the emergence of his son, Otis, as an unapologetically reactionary spokesperson of the New Posh, it is hard to believe that he comes from a working-class background in the industrial north-east and that one of his father's jobs was looking after pit ponies at the local mine).
Go on blustery walks, ride the stout ponies, splash in the indoor waterpark, or cycle the coastal paths.
The women at the manor in turn envied the ones at the abbey with the run of the beautiful park, and those who kept their own ponies in the stables and went hunting.
We felt like pit ponies at Ascot.
Obviously then the state ought to subsidise ponies, to extend the benefits of the institution of pony-owning to as wide a section of society as possible.A joke.
That doesn't mean that ponies are the cause.
When they grow up, they are more likely to own ponies themselves, and so perpetuate the virtuous cycle.
A tax break for ponies would be about as justified.*NB: For the purposes of this blog post, your correspondent has not actually checked that any of this is true, but he is pretty sure that it is.
Children are, the data overwhelmingly proves, better off in households who own ponies than in those who don't.
