Chef Claire Thomson heads back to her roots in Kenya

I have cousins who still live in Harare, Zimbabwe, my godfather flies small aircraft in Zambia, and my father, unable, after all, to live the life intended in London, returned to Africa – Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya – to work in logistics and freight until his retirement a decade ago. My brother, Simon, and I regularly reference our glorious, barefoot childhood; tales of teething on biltong (air-dried beef ), we often tease our mother about the day she left Simon in a lion enclosure aged four, and also of the day, sat in the garden aged 18 months, a baboon grabbed a banana right out of my hands (so terrified, I didn’t cry, I’m told, my face white with shock). Africa is part of who I am; it’s in my makeup. So why hadn’t I been back?

The usual answers – work, motherhood, mortgages and more. And so it was with great excitement when I heard from Sophie Grant, of El Karama Lodge in Kenya, with an invitation to visit her and her family out in Kenya. I’m a chef and food writer and Sophie wanted to tap into my professional knowledge of family food and recipes to use as stimulus in her thriving eco business, the focus of which is very much parents travelling with young families. Passports in date, I didn’t need much convincing.

We arrived in Nairobi, I’m not embarrassed to say, a little on the bedraggled side. An overnight flight with three children under 11-years-old is no mean feat. From there we drove to the Laikipia region, a county in central Kenya roughly the size of Wales, stopping as we crossed the equator to take the obligatory photo. We arrived at El Karama in the late afternoon, by which time elephants, zebras, giraffes, the odd buffalo and a baboon had all been spotted. And that was just from the car, not even on an actual game drive, when you actively go looking for wildlife in a car that looks like something Indiana Jones, or Mad Max would drive. I could sense the children’s excitement. It was tangible, it filled the air in animated giggles, great whoops of laughter and irrepressible cartwheels from Ivy, my nine-year-old who spends so much of her life like so, upside down. I felt emotional, as I knew I would be.

With two brunette children who never seem to burn, just turn nut brown, I was gobsmacked with the attention given to my youngest, Dorothy, who with just a suggestion of sunlight, will turn pink as a raspberry. Sun cream applied, hats adjusted or simply popped in the shade if it all got too much, bush school had my kids down pat, nothing was too much trouble.

And what did I do with all this eerie child-free – children blissfully happy – time? I cooked a bit in the kitchen, apron on, barefoot, of course. Chefs Issac, Jane and Wanjala couldn’t have been more inviting (I’ve worked in plenty of professional kitchens where this hasn’t been the case). Most days we jumped in the jeep and headed up to the nearby kitchen garden to pick from a gorgeous medley of produce that we could use that day in the kitchen.

The synergy between the working farm, the wild environs and the lodge itself mean that this is a holiday with something for everyone, with each facet as significant as the other. If cheetah spotting, rummaging for organic mangoes and swimming in a perfectly natural swimming pool sounds like it would appeal to all your family, then El Karama Lodge is right for you.

I helped in the kitchen because – unsurprisingly – it is a space I always gravitate to, holiday or not. And this in a nutshell sums up why my family had such a tremendous time away on holiday; at El Karama, I felt that anything is possible.