Family camping holidays: Northumberland in a tent

Surveying the Dunstan Hill Club Site in Northumberland - with its scores of camper-vans, caravans and motor-homes - my heart goes through the floor. It isn’t just the other campers, who all look a bit keen and hearty. The camp-site is soggy, the weather forecast is atrocious, and I am dubious that our £50 Argos tent will last the night.

Pitching up for a great holiday: kids love camping

My sons, Dexter, ten, and Geordie, seven, had been pestering me for some time to go camping. I haven’t been on a trip for over 25 years. And after watching their inept dad bodge around with the tent for nearly an hour, even their enthusiasm begins to wane.

Then the mist arrives. It starts to pour and our flimsy tent sounds like the inside of a bass drum.

But as it turns out: this is the best holiday of the year. And, at just over £20-a-night, certainly the cheapest.

There’s one thing about camp-sites which I had not realised before: the children can spend their entire time playing. Playing with other children. Even when it’s foggy and spitting with rain, and even when the playground consists of two swings and a small slide, they want to be out there with their camp-mates.

This is an eye-opener. I’ve done solo holidays with the boys before, taken them to hotels and self-catering flats, and it’s a back-breaker. I’m more than up for entertaining my sons - but I do need the occasional break. When this happens, I usually manage about two paragraphs of a book before they’ve started squabbling or need some attention.

Adventure playground: Northumberland's Heritage Coast is perfect for long walks

But although hotels have plenty of possible play-mates, the children never have any autonomy. There always has to be a vigilant parent on hand, nursing a coffee as they ponder what they would rather be doing with their day.

And yet on a camp-site in the wilds of the Northumberland coast... Even quite young children can roam as they please, and their parents can cook, or read, or savour their wine as they watch the spiders build webs in the tent canopy. It’s true that camp-sites are not for the squeamish. The toilets and showers at Dunstan Hill in Northumberland are squeaky-clean and hum of disinfectant, but there’s no getting away from the bare-brick walls and the slightly blockhouse feel.

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The problem is not the toilets themselves, but the prospect of having to share them with other people. Not that the children could give a hoot. Then there’s the mud in the morning; and cooking al fresco under the eyes of at least a dozen other campers; and the general grunginess that comes with sleeping in a tent.

William and his sons enjoyed Northumberland's great outdoors

But a few insects in the hair and some dodgy cooking is a small price to pay for being able to watch your young roam free.

You don’t really need to go anywhere if you’re on a campsite, as all the playmates are on tap. But in Northumberland, there are plenty of good solid day-trips. We spend a day at nearby Alnwick Castle, where much of Harry Potter was filmed. I thought Dexter might be turn his nose up at the “broom-flying lessons”, but he goes for it, sky-larking with the five-year-olds. The poison garden is another hit: the boys love hearing how the toxic plants had been used in various real-life murders.

Bamburgh Castle is another great outing, as is Holy Island, particularly if you can time your run back so that you’re on the causeway just as the incoming tide starts licking at your hub-caps.

The Northumberland beaches are, of course, a lovely sight, though I only ever see them when it was dreek and cloudy. I suspect that when it’s sunny, the beaches are quite magnificent.

The next day, with the smell of bacon heavy in the air, I look out from the tent to see the boys squatting on the wet grass with some girls exchanging Lego tips.

It helps that we have no screens - no television, computer, i-pad. Which causes some complaining at first, but is soon forgotten. At bed-time, with nothing else to do, Dexter even starts reading. For a solo parent, camping holidays are a complete life-saver. Looking after the children becomes a pleasure rather than a grind. And at just £21 (£23?) a night, it is the best value holiday we’ve ever had.

Travel facts

The Dunstan Hill Club Site at Dunstan, Alnwick, Northumberland is open from March 21 to November 4, with 150 pitches; non-members welcome. In the high season, a night at Dunstan Hill costs £9.65 per adult, £3 per child and £7.20 for the pitch.

For more details: www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk

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