"Man is small and, therefore, small is beautiful."
So wrote the late philosopher-economist EF Schumacher, and I think it’s fairly safe to assume that he had campsites uppermost in his mind when the notion came to him. Certainly, the tide of evidence backing up his assertion is irresistible: whether on a farm, by the sea, behind a pub, beside a river, on a tiny island or even next to a museum, a small campsite will always triumph over a large one in the same way that a cosy boutique will ever prevail over a warehouse-like chain store. It’s a matter of soul. It was an incident that occurred in the summer of 2001 that convinced me of the truth of Schumacher’s maxim. I’d just enjoyed a very pleasant day cycling around Dartmoor. I hadn’t booked anywhere for the night so, with evening drawing on, I made for a campsite marked on my OS map. Hauling myself over one last hill the trees parted and I looked down on the modest slice of Devon that was to be my home for the night. But at the sight of it my little heart sank. The bijou glade of my imaginings was, in reality, a huge commercial site that appeared to have been styled after a particularly unfortunate internment camp – nothing but rows of static caravans and expanses of tarmac. I stopped at the bottom of the hill and took out my map: no other campsites for miles and miles.
I was just beginning to resign myself to my fate when a sign on a tree caught my eye. Handwritten and fastened to the trunk by drawing pins, it bore the simple one-word legend ‘Camping’, with an arrow pointing right. Ten minutes later I was putting my tent up on the back lawn of a gorgeous farmhouse. Birds flitted around me, an apple tree proffered the possibility of free pudding and my pitch was surrounded on three sides by flowerbeds bursting with colour – it was very heaven.
I spend a great deal of my time wandering around Britain and for roughly two months a year I’m under canvas, so I’ve stumbled across a good number of tiny campsites over the years. Sadly, a few have aped some of the worst examples of their larger brethren by being little more than glorified car parks. However, a lot more have turned out to be cracking little places that have gladdened my soul on arrival, and where I’ve left a little bit of my heart on departure.
Ten of Britain's best small campsites
Click on the links below to see a full guide to each campsite.Badrallach, Scotland
The Lazy Duck, Scotland
Trericket Mill, Wales
Middle Ninfa Farm, Wales
Park Farm, Yorkshire
The Buzzards, Herefordshire
Brickyard Farm, Norfolk
Cookham Lock, Berkshire
Pinkhill Lock, Oxfordshire
Broad Meadow House, Cornwall
Tiny Campsites by Dixe Wills (Punk Publishing) features 75 sites around the UK, and is available now for £10.95 from www.tinycampsites.co.uk
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