Camping is more than just a cheap holiday: it's about revelling in the glorious great outdoors and getting back to basics. Just how basic depends on your taste, which is why this list of best campsites in the UK has been split up into different kinds of camping holidays: best campsites by the beach, best campsites for kids and families, best campsites for scenery, best campsites for peace and quiet and best campsites for adventurers.
Best Campsites by the beach:
Near Swansea, the Three Cliffs Bay Caravan and Camping Site is a blue bay enclosed with grassy wildflower dotted limbs that makes you wake up in the morning feeling glad of the world we live in. It's so close to the beach that you can slide down the hill to it, just like the Ayr Holiday Park, another of the best campsites on the coast, which has views over the cliffs and beach of Porthmeor Bay.
Shell Island Campsite, on an island you can only reach at low tide, is one of the UK's largest and best campsites and once you get there and pitch your tent in the sand dunes you're a captive audience for the views and the beach, the entertainment of going crabbing on the causeway or, and strolling the paths that wind all over the island.
Best Campsites for Kids and Families:
Fisherground Campsite is a child's dream: it has an adventure course, a tree house, zip wire and a pond with rafts; and just down the road is a miniature steam railway, but best of all you're allowed to have an open fire, and they do a big communal barbecue.
For adults the draw is the close proximity to the scenic strolls of the Lake District. If your kids like to make a lot of noise, each of the 20 pitches in of the Blackberry Wood Campsite, just off the South Downs Way, has its own little wooded clearing marked out by logs around a fireplace, and you can bring your dog.
Best Campsites for Adventure:
Gwern Gof Isaf Farm is popular with Duke of Edinburgh Award challengers, rock climbers, abseilers and people who prefer sweeping scenes of rocky peaks and outcrops rising up to Tyfan Peak, over creature comforts.
Sligachan Campsite benefits from the epic Black Cuillins in the same way, so all walking, cycling, or recreating is on a grander scale and the facilities are basic.
Best Campsites for Scenery:
Lovely views of the North Devon coast are the Little Meadow Camp Site's main attraction; the cliff it perches on has been shaped into terraces so that every pitch gets a scenic view of the Atlantic over Watermouth Bay. Batcombe Vale Camp in deepest, rural Somerset is set among hills that roll around greenly, waiting for walkers to explore them. Four lovely lakes, ringed by pathways and lanes and well stocked with fish and free boats make up the idyllic picture near Longleat Zoo.
Most Peaceful Campsites:
Tranquil Side Farm is surrounded by breathtaking views overlooking Ullswater, and is a mile from the nearest road so the only sounds you'll hear are the quiet murmurs of fellow campers and the rural ambient bleating of sheep. Skye Farm Camping Ground by Buttermere is one of the prettiest places in the pretty Lakes District and has a no bar, no car rule, mean this is camping for people who like camping. All you hear is the babbling of the brook, and the air, sans exhaust, is clean and crisp.
