Leaving the world behind at Copper Beech Glade, Yorkshire

We spent a blissful three nights recently staying at Copper Beech Glade in Yorkshire. This is a beautiful glamping site with all the facilities you would expect to entice even the most hardened anti-camper to join you on an adventure. I should know as one of the friends that joined us is fervently against sleeping in the great outdoors and she loved it!

The glade has three gipsy caravans, beautifully restored and extremely comfortable. Bella and Carmen are the adult sized caravans, with delightfully soft double beds and the most plush duvets ever. Rosita is their baby sister, with a smaller bed suitable for children or one smaller adult! Each one comes equipped with its own power, so electric lights are available.

There is also a double sofa bed in the log cabin on site, again massively comfortable. The log cabin is home to your more traditional cooking facilities – with a kettle, toaster, fridges and hot running water. Everything you could need. More exciting is the fire pit and the outdoor food preparation area at the side of the cabin where there is a massive gas barbecue, but also some truly wonderful cast iron cookware and a very nifty campfire grill so that you can craft your own al fresco meals, which we did with gusto.

There is a wet room in the log cabin as well, with a reasonable shower. It’s not the most powerful, but it is hot and wet, so that’s enough for me when it comes to getting clean! It just takes a little longer to wash the shampoo out of your hair! All of the cleaning products, both for yourself and for your pots and pans are provided as the site owners want only organic, natural products to be used to help preserve the environment and our precious water supply. Which is both very commendable and means that you don’t have to bring as much stuff with you!

We were also very pleased to have a welcome basket with some interesting goodies for us on arrival, including a bottle of wine (thumbs up), fresh baked bread and shortbread, eggs, milk and other useful essentials – not least of which was two packs of marshmallows which we all enjoyed toasting on the fire. There is also a small but useful selection of spices, sauces and the like in the kitchen meaning that you only need to bring main ingredients with you to be able to cook delicious meals.

Toilet facilities come in the form of a compost toilet which is clean, comfortable and refreshingly light in the smell stakes! It’s a very short walk across the glade to reach it and all of the cabins come with a wind up torch, so you’ll have no problem finding your way over there on a midnight dash to the facilities!

Ray Mears Extreme Firewifery

There is a small village right outside of the grounds of Markington Hall, where the site is located. They have a post office with a small general store which is handy for essentials and there are also two pubs within walking distance if you fancy it, although we were more than happy to stay on site and play with our camp fire rather than venturing out to meet the locals.

There are plenty of places around for day trips and a massive folder of information is available for guests so you can plan your exciting adventures at the camp site. We also made full use of the selection of sports equipment that was available, my personal favourite being the opportunity to teach my friends to play croquet, which I haven’t played myself since uni! There are also board games and even a ukelele in the cabin in case of a rainy day, but we found that the trees in the glade kept us well sheltered during light showers so we didn’t have to retreat to the cabin.

We had a wonderful time at Copper Beech Glade. You can hire the whole site for £195 a night in July and August and £165 a night the rest of the time. Between 6 of us, this worked out quite well, but it is verging on the expensive side I think. The facilities are excellent and it is something unique, so I can see why they can command those sort of prices. It’s definitely whetted our appetite for trying out more unique camping experiences in the UK.