Farm Stay

Farm stays offer a genuinely different kind of overnight stop to the usual campsite or layby. Many farms across the UK now welcome vans and motorhomes on a patch of their land, often with access to a water tap and perhaps an electric hook-up, at a cost well below a standard campsite pitch. The setting is usually the main appeal – a field, an orchard, a courtyard, or a corner of farmland that gives a real sense of being out in the countryside.

The experience of waking up to the sounds of a working farm – livestock, birdsong, the absence of road noise – is something a lot of van travellers come to prefer once they have tried it. The informality tends to suit vanlife well, and the hosts are often happy to share local knowledge about walks, good spots nearby and which roads work for larger vehicles.

Farm stays are found through a combination of dedicated apps and websites, word of mouth, and occasionally just by asking at the gate. The Britstops guide, Campra, and similar platforms list farms that have explicitly opened themselves up to van travellers, and the range of settings available – from upland sheep farms in Wales to fruit farms in Kent – is wider than most people realise.

A few practical things are worth knowing: drainage for grey water and waste disposal are usually limited, so being set up to manage this independently makes the experience work better. Farm stays also require a higher degree of leave-no-trace behaviour than a formal campsite, and treating the farm with genuine respect is what keeps these kinds of arrangements working for everyone.