First started back at Beltane in 1997, The Grey Mare has been Southampton Pagans Moot Beltane and Lammas getaway. Based in the beautiful New Forest it's a chance for friends and families to come together and celebrate our diverse spirituality and community.

Beautiful rituals, coming of age rites and handfasting are popular activities as well as many camp themed games, groups and workshops.

However I feel the best is always saved to last, each night a mighty bonfire is set which easily seats 100 plus guests and a chance for self-made merriment ensues. People bring instruments, stories, songs and life to the fire. Sit back warm your toes take in the celestial display whilst eating and drinking and laughing with friends in this close-knit friendly group. Children and well-behaved pets always welcome and encouraged to join in with special activities available for our younger members. You won't find Pyramid stages with bands playing or burger vans and portaloos. We offer so much more!!

We are not an open festival but a closed camp of friends and family. It is primarily for safety reasons; the kids can run free and our cars/tents don't have to be locked. So we don't advertise or open our gates to the general public. You can, however, bring guests as long as you're at camp with them and you are willing to be accountable for their behaviour. Day tickets are always available if you would like to come down for just the day.


The Camp is small and intimate family friendly with guests being part of Southampton Pagan Moot at one time or another. This is still the preferred method of an invitation for new members. Come along to the Moots so we get to know you and then ask a long-standing SPM group member to vouch for your first visit/stay.  You automatically become a Grey Mare Camp member if you have attended 2 camps in 2 years. This leads to an invite to a secret FB group and specialised forum set up specifically for the Camp.

The Grey mare in the title refers to Epona who is widely seen as our patroness.

Wiki Quote

In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures.[1] She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion.[2] Unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities, the worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself,"[3] was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries AD

In Great Britain
The probable date of c. 1400 BC ascribed to the giant chalk horse carved into the hillside turf at Uffington, in southern England, is too early to be directly associated with Epona a millennium and more later, but clearly represents a Bronze Age totem of some kind. The West Country traditional hobby-horse riders parading on May Day at Padstow, Cornwall and Minehead, Somerset, which survived to the mid-twentieth century, even though Morris dances had been forgotten, may have deep roots in the veneration of Epona, as may the British aversion to eating horsemeat.[22] At Padstow formerly, at the end of the festivities the hobby-horse was ritually submerged in the sea.[23]
A provincial though not crude small (7.5 cm high) Roman bronze of a seated Epona, flanked by a small mare and stallion, found in England,[24] is conserved in the British Museum.[25] Lying on her lap and on the patera raised in her right hand are disproportionately large ears of grain; ears of grain also protrude from the mouths of the ponies, whose heads are turned towards the goddess. On her left arm she holds a yoke, which curves up above her shoulder, an attribute unique to this bronze statuette.[26]
The Welsh figure Rhiannon rides a white horse but has no other attributes in common with Epona.[27] A south Welsh folk ritual called Mari Lwyd (Grey Mare) is still undertaken in December — an apparent survival of the veneration of the goddess. The pantomime horse is thought to be a related survival.