Product Description

This best-selling travel guide gets a complete update in a fully revised Second Edition. Now covering 70 of the very best campsites in England including 35 brand new entries, it's essential reading for contemporary campers. As before, it features the pick of campsites and camping experiences across England, and presents in-depth reviews, practical info and plenty of inspirational colour photos for every site. For this edition, original author Jonathan Knight has overseen a team of 6 travel writers. Between them, they have visited over 500 campsites, travelled thousands of miles and lost at least half a dozen tent pegs in the search for England's coolest sites. New entries include a quirky sea-view site at Lizard Point, a retro-kitsch caravan park in Yorkshire and a Dorset farm with castle views.For each campsite, you'll find all the essential info that other guides leave out, including 'Nearest Decent Pub' and 'If It Rains' entries and new for this edition, a food and drink category to guide you to the best quality local produce and unusual gastronomic treats. The handy 'At A Glance' section allows you to easily identify the campsites you like, by browsing categories including 'Cool For Campfires', 'Family Friendly', 'Romantic Retreats', 'Lakeside Chilling' and 'Surf's Up'. This new edition confirms Cool Camping as the first-choice guidebook for contemporary campers. Other books in the series include France, Wales, Scotland and the Cool Camping Cookbook.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4755 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Time Out, April 12th 2006
'Fantastic!'

FT Magazine, September 12, 2006
"This guide... will have you longing for the open air."

From the Publisher
The best campsites and camping experiences in England in one great-looking book. With over 200 colour photos, a stylish design, plus entertaining and insightful reviews, the Cool Camping series is set to become as essential to campers as guy ropes and tent pegs.

Forthcoming titles:
Cool Camping Wales
Cool Camping Scotland

"This is what camping’s all about – a total escape from city craziness, a middle-of-nowhere experience and a place to really chill. Count me in!"
Rob Da Bank
Radio 1 DJ and Bestival founder

"I tried vainly to mis-spend my youth at dozens of the grimmest, soggiest campsites in the land. With the help of Jonathan Knight’s brilliant compilation of canvas, I’m heading back to basics – but trying to get it right this time."
Simon Calder
Travel Editor, The Independent

"Cool Camping England is a great idea; as much an inspiring coffee table book as a camping guide. Proof that the age of dull, dreary camping is finished for ever!"
Cath Kidston
International Designer and guru of stylish camping

"Pick up any other guide on this subject, and you'll soon see why Cool Camping is just that. Stylish and practical, it's the new bible for the contemporary camper."
James Lohan
Mr & Mrs Smith Hotel Collection

"Cool Camping England totally reinvents the camping weekend for a brand new generation of campers."
Emily Eavis
Glastonbury Festival organizer

Customer Reviews

Great gems
This is great! We were camping up around the lake district and it directed us to some superb little-used spots. It also has excellent suggestions for eating/drinking etc near each campsite and/or warnings if there's a bit of a walk. We definitely found a few gems (like the Drunken Duck!). It covers 40 campsites across England (each one gets a page or two, and some lovely photographs so you can see what you're getting) - not a huge amount of choice, but as it says itself it "features a hand-picked selection", and seemingly they visited hundreds of camp sites across England to find this list of 40, and i'd much prefer that to a huge list of ones where you turn up and are disappointed.
Something that i found a huge advantage, but that you might find a disadvantage is that they're NOT looking for "holiday park" type camp grounds - their (and my) idea of hell. so the ones listed here will be beautiful , or quirky, or in a brilliant location ... but they won't have lots of swimming pools and hi-de-hi activities etc.
The only (small) disadvantage is, although the directions to/from the campsites are detailed, it wasn't great with directions to some of the "nearby food/amenites" locations - but it does give phone numbers so you can ring and find out if you want to (i suppose it saved space).

Bottom line - i've just now discovered on Amazon (sorry - i originally bought cool camping : england in a little camping shop!) that there are companion guides to wales etc ... and I'm going straight out to put them in the shopping basket!

Quality not quantity
I always loathed camping as a child. As a 40-something adult, financial circumstances have forced me to overcome my dislike. Thankfully, the clothing and kit available these days make it much more bearable (by the way, check out the novel but useful gear on www.backpackinglight.co.uk)

A trawl on Amazon led me to Cool Camping and, based on the other reviews, I got a copy.

It has definitely lived up to expectations. OK, maybe there are only 40 campsites featured and they are clustered in the furthest places in England. But I haven't so far found one that looked like a duff inclusion. Each site is described very well in lots of photos and words to get across the special features and character of each one, and there's a summary for each including upsides and downsides, costs, nearest decent pub, things to do on a rainy day, and alternative sites if it's full. There's also a 'directory' of sites with headings such as 'Surf's Up', 'Stunning Views', 'Good for first timers', 'Something Different'. And it will take me quite a while to get round 40 good sites, so I really don't care that the book doesn't contain hundreds. It would only make choosing more difficult still!

So I'm very happy with my book and the minute there's a version out for Scotland or Wales, it will be on my Wish List...

38 To Go
Apart from the cracking pictures, Cool Camping has all the things you need to know; prices, facilities, what to do when it rains (or snows, hails, etc) and most importantly, the nearest pub.

Highly recomended for first-timers and those regular campers that are looking for something less run-of-the-mill.

The best thing is someone has written in the front of mine ;)