The best UK camping spots with availability this summer
As the weather improves, al fresco accommodation gets that bit more appealing. From glamping options to back to basics digs, here are 10 of the best places to pitch up in August.
Wild Canvas Camping, Somerset
This pop-up camping experience opens from 13 August, promising “family-friendly festival vibes” in Somerset’s Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Running for 12 days, Wild Canvas offers the option of pitching your own tent or staying in one of its luxe tipis, complete with hand-woven rugs, mattresses and LED lanterns.
Facilities include compost WCs and shower units, while the festival feel comes courtesy of live music, plus mostly free entertainment and wellness offerings. There are yoga sessions, Taiji and Qi Gong classes, farm tours and outdoor cinema screenings.
Drinks can be procured at the pop-up bar, while home-made takeaway food is available all day from the onsite café. Guests can even pre-order breakfast hampers for “tent delivery”.
Tipis from £175 per night for a couple, or £200 per night for four people, with a minimum stay of four nights.
Tent pitches cost £22 per person per night (three-night minimum stay); toddlers go free and 3-15 year olds pay £5 per night.
Mac’s Farm, Sussex
Based on an organic egg farm in the South Downs National Park, Mac’s Farm has three fields, each with a different vibe. Choose from family-friendly, relaxed and good for groups – and choose whether to pitch a tent or stay in one of the property’s glamping-ready bell tents.
Campers can purchase a kit to use the on-site firepits to cook up a feast, and there are also onsite dining and drinking options, including wood-fired pizzas.
Kids can be kept easily entertained with adventure club The Outdoors Project (£7.50 a ticket); Deano’s Snake Shack, where children get to meet and learn about snakes (£2); and meet the farmer sessions, which include the chance to mingle with the chickens and pick and purchase your own eggs.
From £40 per night for a pitch sleeping four.
Camp Hox, Oxfordshire
The brains behind the popular Hoxton Hotel group have set their sights on camping this summer, setting up the pop-up Camp Hox for the month of August.
It’s hardly roughing it; based in the grounds of an 18th-century country manor house in Witney, Oxfordshire, Camp Hox offers 12 lotus tents decked out with proper beds, Hoxton pillows and duvets and greenery from Patch plants.
Guests get their own private powder room, toilet and hot shower with Blank toiletries. Complimentary breakfast bags are delivered each morning, plus there’s a fridge stocked with treats, a bottle of Altano natural wine waiting in each tent on arrival, an outdoor pour-your-own Graham’s Port and tonic bar, and a BBQ for cooking on each evening. All cooking equipment is provided, alongside a free pot-washing service, and there are bikes onsite for exploring.
Two nights, plus a complimentary night at one of the Hoxton’s hotels, costs £370 for two people; or you can hire the whole site for the night, sleeping 24 people, for £2,000.
Wild Riverside Camping, Suffolk
Based on Simper Farm on the Suffolk coast, Wild Riverside Camping is rustic camping at its finest – think wild swimming in the River Deben and a campsite reached by a lane lined with blackberry bushes.
The back-to-basics experience is compounded by a dearth of facilities, with just portable toilets, bins and tanks of fresh water.
What it lacks in showers it makes up for in location though, set a couple of minutes from the estuary beach and a 20-minute stroll from local pub the Ramsholt Arms.
As Simper is a working farm, guests can also buy fresh produce, such as smoked fish, eggs and veg boxes.
Grass pitch sleeping six costs from £165 for a week in August.
Drymen Camping, Stirlingshire
Plopped bang on Scotland’s most famous long-distance walk, the West Highland Way, and located within Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, this camping spot is an ideal base for walkers.
Campers can choose between pitching a tent or opting for one of the site’s four glamping pods. Either way, they get access to hot showers and proper toilets, plus a shelter for preparing food and washing dishes.
As well as the West Highland Way, there’s also the National Cycle Route 7 – the John O’Groats to Land’s End stretch – to explore, plus the nearby town of Drymen, offering a number of pubs.
From £322 for a pitch sleeping six for seven nights, or £252 for a pod sleeping two.
Cynefin Eco Camping, Carmarthenshire
This partially wooded campsite is all about the flora and fauna – there are bird boxes and dormouse boxes scattered among the trees and wildflowers and barn owls can be spotted flying overhead come nightfall.
A resource box comes with bird and bug identification books and a bat detector to let guests truly get back to nature.
To ensure a tranquil vibe, capacity is limited to just six tents, including two pre-pitched bell tents and a tipi.
From £260 for a bell tent sleeping six for seven nights.
Wheems Organic Farm, Orkney
If you can get yourself all the way to Scotland’s ethereal Orkney Islands, a one-of-a-kind camping experience awaits.
Campers can pitch up in the onsite meadows or stay in one of four wooden bothies insulated with sheeps’ fleece and offering double-glazed doors that open onto a deck overlooking the bay.
Sadly the ultimate luxury options – two bell tents and a Mongolian-style yurt, complete with log-burning stoves and double beds – are closed for the remainder of 2020.
The eco-friendly site is powered entirely by wind, and facilities include toilets, showers and a communal kitchen.
From £182 for a week’s pitch sleeping six; a bothie sleeping three from £280.
Plumpton College Camping, East Sussex
A field at an agricultural college left empty after a festival was cancelled has resulted in this pop-up camping spot in sight of the South Downs ridge.
The 60-pitch campsite is only open for August, but offers proper toilets and showers courtesy of the college, plus the option of hiring one of 20 bell tents if setting up your own seems too much (bedding not provided).
It’s the perfect base from which to explore the South Downs National Park.
From £672 for a pitch sleeping eight people for one week.
Far Peak Camping, Cotswolds
Those looking for a side of activity with their camping will find ample entertainment at Far Peak. As well as the multiple walks throughout the surrounding Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, there is also an onsite climbing and activities centre, low ropes course, playground and bushcraft and archery workshops.
More than 100 pitches are spread across two fields, alongside three luxury geo-domes, complete with king-sized beds, wood-fired stoves, outdoor dining sets and BBQs on a private sundeck.
There are hot showers plus an on-site café serving a range of hot foods and cakes, and a pop-up bar.
From £322 for a grass pitches sleeping six for seven nights.
Pleasant Streams Farm Camping, Cornwall
This chilled out site near St Austell offers plenty of outdoor adventures, from a lake complete with rowing boats to wildlife spotting, including the farm’s very own pigs, goats and chickens.
There’s also a sea kayak for hire to explore the nearby coastline, plus the Pentewan Valley Trail to discover by bike.
Facilities include basic showers, proper toilets and a water-tap for washing up, plus there’s a summerhouse with books and games for rainy days.
Guests can choose from tent pitches and private bell tents.
From £742 for a week in a bell tent sleeping six.
