If you look at the website before your visit, don’t be put off by the emphasis on holiday cottages and caravans. This 30-acre woodland site has lots of prime tent pitches among the trees and on the lawn in front of the house. If hide-and-seeking in the woods, peddling along the figure-of-eightshaped path through the site or ball games aren’t enough to keep the kids busy, they can always head off to the playground for climbing, swinging and sliding, or to the indoor family games room for table football and pool. Or go and visit the neighbours! The National Trust’s Dunwich Heath Coastal Centre and Beach is right next door.
Steps (rather steep ones) take you down to the stony, band of beach itself, at the bottom of the cliff, where you can fly kites, beachcomb or paddle in the sea, or take the short walk along the pebbles to the Coastal Centre, for porpoise - and seal -spotting in the Seawatch Room. While also on the doorstep (or should that be tentstep?) is the Minsmere bird reserve, recently on the BBC's Springwatch and home to fantastic nature trails throughout the heath, woodland, beach and dunes. Special events are organised year round, so you can try your hand at nestboxbuilding and join in their birdwatching safaris, while the birding hides are open for anyone to use (if you've got the patience to keep quiet for long enough that is!)
The combination of quiet woodland camping, days on the beach and a wealth of treasures to explore, make for an all round gem of a campsite. Yes, the place is constantly modernising, with an onsite bar, electricity on almost every pitch and a second, newly refurbished shower block, but thankfully it's more to keep up with the times than to slide the slippery slope towards becoming a commercial power house. The feel is still one that very few sites are able to master; being large, universal and welcoming to both campers and caravaners, yet still retaining a small-scale feel and that true sense of camping where you can pedal your bike safely around by day and snooze peacefully beneath the trees at night.
