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Last year we decided to work out, once and for all, definitively and unquestionably, the answer to a question that we are asked almost every week…

“Just how many people can eat in a 21ft yurt?”

For the answer we had to go back 15 years to when we started converting a derelict old barn into our house. With nowhere to stay we borrowed a friend’s old 2 birth caravan to stay in and it had a little table in it, just big enough for four to eat comfortably.

But that first summer, as all our friends came to see the ludicrous project we had embarked on, no one imagined how many we would cram in to eat around it.

In the end we regularly found space for nine or ten people - elbows bashing and conversation elevated in the confined space - and what fantastic, riotous fun-filled evenings they were.

Since then our experience has widened… dinners, weddings, friend’s kitchens, parties, cafes, posh restaurants, weddings in marquees and top hotels, . All have now come under the scrutiny of our trusty tape measure.

The result is two simple conclusions…

Too far apart - too dull.

Too close together - no such thing.

But we also needed numbers and a theoretical maximum.  After a lot of headscratching we took the  numbers down to our wonderful team of Jehovah’s Witness welders in Waterlooville!

And thanks to them it now has physical form…

a vast 6 part 360degree masterpiece

‘the mother of all tables’,

‘the dinner doughnut’

call it what you will, it’s fab.

And the answer to the question? How many people?

Well, first time out it catered for an easy twenty. Then we upped the anti with 25. Last week it was a more respectable 32, and next month it’s a yurt busting 48 (although they’ve invited 50!). I have a feeling though - if our caravan experience is anything to go by - that it could get up towards 60.  

Which will be fine.  

I hope.

As long as they’re good friends.

And if they’re not they soon will be!

Whatever the numbers, one thing is sure. Everyone who uses it seems to have a pretty jolly time!