Trailerflash
Throughout Scotland
This option is for the retro design geek, or indeed anyone who loves Americana. The Trailerflash people have made a business of parking an authentic US Airstream campervan, equipped with all you need for comfort and fun, in whichever hidden spot of Scotland you choose, be it mountainous, coastal or urban.
The ultimate iconic trailer (they have one in the Museum of Modern Art in New York), this silver bullet comes equipped with central heating, a leather-upholsted lounge area and a double bed with blackout curtains. It has a couple of TVs with DVD players and a radio/MP3/CD, so you can play your Elvis and Doris Day. There's also a kitchen, a wet room and outdoor furniture – all you have to do is sit back and enjoy.
Delivery and collection from £100 depending on where in Scotland you want to be based; Nov-Mar, excluding Christmas and New Year, from £800 per week, high-season rates from £975 per week
Roulotte Retreat
Eildon Hills, Borders
A sense of pastoral tranquillity is what Roulotte Retreat is all about. Around the generous shade of a tree in a three-acre meadow in woodland beneath the Eildon Hills, a collection of custom-made, hand-carved roulottes – wagons in French – is taking shape.
Two of these luxurious hideouts are already in place – Devanna and Karlotta – for couples; with a further two – Rosa and Coco, for families with children – to be ready late spring/early summer.
Owners Alan and Avril's travels have inspired the specific decor of each wagon, from India to Morocco. Equipped with wood-burning stoves and underground heaters, they will keep you toasty on a nippy night.
Onsite massage, yoga and beauty treatments are on offer for extra comfort and relaxation. That said, this natural pleasure garden, alive with birdsong, might be all you need to unwind.
Open all year round; from £90 a night
Ecopod Holidays
Cromford, Derbyshire
Built from sustainable and natural materials, these little handmade havens on New House Organic Farm at the southern tip of the Peak District are a true find.
Owner Craig Banks and his team are passionate about nature, and have set everything up so your holiday is at once luxurious and ecological. Recycling facilities are integrated into the cabins, which are powered by wind and solar energy, and there are composting toilets and solar cooking facilities. Local produce (eggs, salads and meat for barbecuing) is available for purchase at the farm, and there are wood-burning stoves for colder nights.
With room for two adults and two children, they make for excellent family getaways.
There's lots to discover locally – the area is honeycombed with caverns – or for crazy arboreal activity, Go Ape, with its zip wires and tarzan swings is half an hour's drive north-west of the farm. For something more refined, Chatsworth House with its 1,000-acre park and 100-acre garden is nearby.
Mar–Oct; £30-£60 per night; 07929 616282
The Willows
Abersoch, Gwynedd
The Llyn peninsula is said to be the most beautiful in Wales, a curl of coastal heathland, crumbling cliffs and whistling sands strewn across long, sweeping beaches that sink into the Irish Sea.
At The Willows you can experience all this in accommodation they have called, oddly fittingly, hobbit pods. These micro-lodges are best described as oversized, hollowed-out tree trunks sat on their sides, panelled inside with antique pine and made into a cosy little tunnel-shaped abode.
But you can also pitch or park your own shelter, or hire a pre-pitched tent. It's an impeccably kept site, the facilities are bountiful, and there's lots of space. A 10-minute drive in any direction will take you to one of 19 beaches.
Hobbit Pods £58–68, grass pitch £22-£30, hard-standing £25-£32, pre-pitched tents £20-£32 (2 people + 1 car), see website for extras, 01758 740676
Gypsy Caravan Breaks
Pitney, Somerset
Half a mile from the village of Pitney, tucked away off a tiny lane, lies Marsh Farm. There, in an old cider apple orchard, carpeted with long meadow grass and wild flowers, you'll find a traditional "bow-top, open-lot" red and citron-yellow Gypsy caravan.
All flowing curves and hand-painted flowers, with crisp bedlinen and tasselled woollen blankets, this bijou abode sleeps two people. It's the very one used on the cover of a 1970s reprint of Enid Blyton's Five Go Off in a Caravan.
Although the farmhouse isn't far away, it's hidden from view to ensure privacy. There's a separate shower in a shepherd's hut, and a caravan with electricity, a fridge and cooker. Most people, however, prefer to cook over the open fire. Upon arrival you'll be given a hamper with half a dozen eggs, a pack of farm-shop sausages and a jug of local cider, along with a stash of firewood.
Then you can sit back and enjoy your surroundings. There are horses and donkeys in the pasture, and chickens and ducks clucking around.
There is plenty to do and see in the surrounding area. You could visit, for example, Manor Farm in North Cadbury – home to Montgomery's cheddar. But it's quite possible you'll never venture further than the local farm shop, beguiled by the beauty you have all to yourselves ...
Apr–Oct, from £75 a night to £220 for four nights + £55 for each additional night, Friday and Saturday nights £10 extra per night, 01458 270044
Bloomsburys
Biddenden, Kent
This extraordinary place is at once a creative garden centre, a restaurant and coffee house, a delicatessen, fishmonger, holistic therapy room, arts and crafts workshop, recording studio – and a luxury campsite.
Tipis and yurts (which sleep up to six) along with a handful of vintage Airstream caravans, are available to rent for up to a week at a time. With the cafe and deli on hand, you won't need to bring your stove.
The lush gardens are brimful with carved stoneware, unusual plants, fountains, and winding paths leading out into the open land of the Weald. Just down the road is Sissinghurst Castle, home to Vita Sackville-West's famous English garden.
Open all year; tipis from £110 a night, yurts/bigger tipis from £150 a night, Airstream caravans from £170, based on two people, + £18-£30 per extra person per night; 01580 292992
Alde Garden
Alde Valley, Suffolk
Alde Garden is a peaceful, electricity-free sanctum deep in Suffolk wildflower territory. Here you can either pitch a tent or stay in one of several special shelters – a yurt, a Gypsy wagon, a bell tent, a badger cottage or a tipi. A cob roundhouse, a wooden hideout on stilts and a new yurt are in the making.
There is a communal cooking area in a converted outhouse with pots and pans, a clay pizza oven, stoves and other useful things. There's even a herb garden you can pick from for your pot. A small sheltered area near the house hosts a fridge freezer, washing machine and microwave. Other supplies can be bought from the mobile shop (Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings). An onsite shop is on the way.
You can borrow one of the rustic bikes free of charge for a cycle tour through the surrounding countryside – the garden is on a national cycle route – and walkers will find plenty of footpaths leading through gentle, rolling woodland and farmland.
Owls can be heard most nights, and the current yurt is dedicated to them, with £1 donated per night to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust's barn owl project.
The ethos here is firmly focused on community and conservation – the only lights are solar-powered fairy lights and lanterns, which should ensure dark skies for stargazing or evenings round the fire.
Apr-Oct; badger cottage open all year, tents from £10 per tent pitch per night – see website or phone for other prices; 01728 664178
Original Huts
Bodiam, East Sussex
The accommodation here speaks volumes for the simple life.
Quarry Farm's Mark and Anna Eastwood, inspired by the old local cabins built for itinerant farmhands and shepherds, decided to build their own, fashioned from reclaimed bits and pieces of recycled, local and sustainable materials.
Two huts are currently available for up to four people each. A third hut serves as a washroom and two more are in production.
The cabins are fully furnished with a double bed, a bunk bed, a wood-burning stove, a gas hob, cold-water basin and solar-powered lighting. A cool box, bed linen and a supply of fire wood is given to you at the beginning of your stay, and hampers of excellent local produce can be arranged at any time. Each hut comes with its own firepit for marshmallows, sausages and storytelling, or you can amble across the fields to the local pubs.
One unique feature is that the Kent and Sussex Steam Railway runs through the farm – try its weekend round-trip supper service. Also there's nearby Bodiam Castle to explore, or you could take the Danny Lee ferry on a trip down the river Rother. Oh to be lost for ever in this little neck of the woods …
Open all year; huts available from £75 per night (low season) to £295 (peak season) + £6 per person; 01580 831845
Tolcarne Surf Shacks
Newquay, Cornwall
These little pine bungalows right on the beach at Newquay are a great surf stop – the restless Atlantic ocean stares you square in the face the minute you lift your head from your bunk.
You are right on the very beach that hosts one of Britain's most famous waves to ride, known as The Wedge. Hence there's surfing, boogie boarding, kite surfing, waterskiing and wakeboarding to be tried – or rock pools to poke around in and golden sand to walk along.
A crescent of rugged green cliffs cradle the beach, making it a particularly sheltered spot that's ideal for sunbathing.
Each cabin sleeps up to four, there's a communal washing and cooking area and you can charge your phone at the office.
Apr–Sep; £60–£100 per night (sleeps 4); 01637 872489
Tepee Valley
Markethill, Co Armagh
Tepee Valley campsite is the only one of its kind in Northern Ireland. There is a range of comfy options – a tipi, a festival tent, a red-and-white yurt, a Gypsy wagon called the Rosie Lee with wheels resembling giant daisies, and a round-log cabin straight out of Little House on the Prairie – each skilfully hidden from the other by a beautifully landscaped garden.
Farmland stretches out on three sides, and a newly planted wood is just beginning to sprout. Kids will love it, with a 10-acre playing field, and hens, goats, cats and dogs for company.
Beyond the Cusher valley lie the Mourne mountains, and Slieve Gullion to the south – a mountain swathed in legend and local folklore. Yet the site is within 10 minutes of various big shopping towns, and the medieval city of Armagh is a 15-minute drive away.
Open all year round for log cabin and Gypsy wagon; yurt, tent and tipi open from spring to autumn; festival tent (sleeps 4-5) from £60; tipi £75 (sleeps 6); gypsy wagon £75 (sleeps 4); yurt/log cabin £85 (both sleep 4 – single nights only available midweek), peak season minimum 2 night stay; 02837 552092
Sites chosen by Garri Rayner at goglamping.net
