Cricket Field Campsite

You don’t have to play cricket at this campsite. But it’s flat enough, it’s spacious enough and it’s green and pastoral enough that it somehow feels like an appropriate name; as English as Test Match Special and cucumber sandwiches in Hovis bread. The River Windrush forms the boundary, snaking along the eastern side, while the quiet road you enter and leave by, hidden behind a high hedgeline, borders the west. The only problem for cricketers is the grass, left wild and long in many places to maintain habitats for the bugs and birds. That and the tents, of course. You don’t usually see those on a cricket pitch.

Opened for the first time in 2021, Cricket Field Camping is a back-to-basics pop-up campsite with portable-style toilets, a few hot showers and drinking water taps. By and large it's the space and scenic Cotswold setting of the place that really makes it stand out. The camping meadow is blissfully quiet, with the little village of Temple Guiting 10 minutes’ walk north and the homely stone pub in Kineton 15 minute’s stroll to the south. The rest of the countryside is parcelled up into rolling fields and pockets of woodland, with the long-distance Diamond Way passing a few hundred yards away and the tower of a Norman church visible across the meadows.

Unsurprisingly, then, the campsite is a boon for walkers and those who can do without electricity and fancy facilities, but it’s a real hit with families too, thanks to its proximity to Cotswold Farm Park (two miles) and also the fact it allows campfires, which give the place that essential camping ambience. The river, too, makes the campsite a pleasant place to generally picnic, spend time and watch for wildlife and, though it’s too silty for safe swimming or paddling around, it makes a pleasing presence as you follow its banks on local footpaths, including the mile-and-a-half route to Ford, where a 16th-century courthouse (with dungeons) is now a characterful village pub with a wooden fort for children in the garden and inglenook fireplaces inside.