Wild Canvas Camping

The big music festivals may have been cancelled again this year but that doesn’t mean you can’t still find a campsite with a family festival atmosphere. On the banks of the River Great Ouse, Wild Canvas have set about offering exactly that, with tipis from the organisers of the Tipi Field at Glastonbury Festival and a concoction of local food, family-friendly workshops and small-scale DJ sessions that can’t help but meet the appetite of starved festival goers. Think boutique festival camping but without drunken teenagers tripping over your guy ropes in the middle of the night and background beats keeping you awake at 4am. ‘Good vibes only’, as the kids would say.

Popping up for just one month in the stately parkland of Bedfordshire's Turvey House Estate, Wild Canvas has a festival feel without the festival crowds. Camping pitches are more than 15 metres apart, there’s a limit to the number of campers on the site and workshops are all organised in a socially distanced manner where possible. Most take place around the wellbeing yurt or the main canvas hub, where there are pop-up food offerings and a bar, with groovy summer tunes mixed by Wild Canvas' favourite DJs. Not that you have to take part in anything. You can simply kick back and enjoy the space of the campsite and, of course, an evening around a campfire, which are happily welcomed here provided they're raised off the grass.

The setting itself also takes some beating. People are more accustomed to hearing about the Lake District and the South West Coast when it comes to camping, rather than rural Bedfordshire. But the ancient oaks and historic parkland of the Turvey House Estate is the very picture of English beauty too. The river, which flows languidly along the edge of the campsite, is great for a dip on a hot summers day and there are several good footpaths on the doorstep, including the North Bedfordshire Heritage Trail. When the sun's out and the kids are larking around by the river you'd happily claim Bedfordshire is the most beautiful county of them all.