Measured in a straight line from the centre of Manchester. That is a distance, not a journey. We know where each of these places is to within a few metres and we know nothing whatever about the roads, so this page will not tell you how long anything takes — and neither will any page that dresses a straight line up as “two hours away”.
Three national parks in three directions. The Peak District is the closest thing on this list to a city's back garden; the Lake District and Eryri sit two to three times as far out, north and west. Very few cities anywhere have that spread and Manchester makes remarkably little of it.
4 places, from Barn Farm Campsite at about 35 miles out to The Living Room Treehouses at about 90 miles.
about 35 miles from Manchester, in a straight line
Birchover, Derbyshire
Meadow pitches bordering Stanton Moor and the Nine Ladies stone circle, five-star facilities, four major footpaths from the gate, and Chatsworth nearby.
£ · Budget
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about 75 miles from Manchester, in a straight line
Cumbria
120 informal tent pitches directly beneath the Langdale Pikes, campfires allowed, a proper pub two minutes' walk away, and a near-year-round season.
From £12 / night
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about 90 miles from Manchester, in a straight line
Arthog, Eryri (Snowdonia)
A wild-feel eco campsite tumbling down to the Mawddach Estuary, with secluded woodland pitches, campfires, private paths to the Mawddach Trail and Cadair Idris looming above.
From £10 / adult a night
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about 90 miles from Manchester, in a straight line
near Machynlleth, Powys · Sleeps 2–5
The original Welsh eco treehouses: six wooden hideaways in a hidden valley on the edge of Eryri (Snowdonia).
From £140 / night
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We take the coordinates on each published listing, measure the great-circle distance from a single point in Manchester to each of them, keep everything inside 125 miles and sort nearest first. Distances are rounded to the nearest five miles, because a city centre is a convention rather than a coordinate and the second decimal place would be pretending otherwise.
84 of the 85 published listings carry coordinates. The one that does not cannot appear here at all — a place with no pin has no distance, and estimating one from its county would be an invention.
Only cities with three or more places inside 125 miles get a page — the same floor the collections keep. Or ignore geography and filter all 85 places instead.