Guide · 5 min read
Where you can actually have a campfire
Most British campsites ban them outright. Here are the ones on our list that don't, and what the rules usually are once you're there.
The single most common disappointment in British camping is arriving somewhere beautiful and finding a laminated sign about fire pits. Bans are the default, and usually for good reason — scorched pitches take a season to recover, and a dry August turns a bad decision into a moorland fire.
So a site that permits fires has almost always thought about it properly. That is the useful signal.
The three that allow them
Comrie Croft in Perthshire is the benchmark. The woodland pitches are car-free — you move your kit in by wheelbarrow — and fires are part of the design rather than a concession. Being spread through trees rather than lined up on a field means your fire is not also everybody else's.
Graig Wen above the Mawddach Estuary allows them on the wild-feel pitches, which is the reason to book those rather than the tidier ones. It has the Green Snowdonia sustainability award, so the permission is not carelessness.
Great Langdale is the surprise, because it is National Trust land directly under the Langdale Pikes and you might reasonably assume no. Fires are allowed. There is also a pub two minutes' walk away, which is either a bonus or a threat to the fire ever getting lit.
A site that allows fires has usually thought harder about fire than one that bans them.
And the cabin exception
Kudhva has fire pits at the hideouts above Trebarwith Strand — worth knowing if you want the flames without the tent. It is off-grid, so the fire is doing real work rather than being a feature.
What the rules normally are
They vary, but the pattern is consistent enough to plan around. Expect to buy wood on site — bringing your own risks importing pests, and most owners will ask you not to. Expect a raised pit or a fixed ring rather than a fire straight on the grass. Expect a cut-off time, usually somewhere around eleven.
And expect all of it to be suspended in a dry spell. Every site here reserves the right to say no on the day, and in a July like the last few, some will. Check before you drive four hours on the strength of it.
