Our story
Three generations, one field.
The Armstrongs have farmed this corner of Beadnell since 1946. We stopped keeping sheep on the top twelve acres in 1987 and started letting people sleep on them instead.
Why we do it
We only have one site, so we can only get it right here.
Grandad let the first tent onto the top field in the summer of 1987, mostly because a family from Durham asked nicely and the sheep had gone up to the higher ground anyway.
They came back the next year, and brought two more families. By 1991 there was a standpipe and a shed with two showers in it, and Grandad had planted the first hundred trees of the shelter belt because he had worked out that people would stay longer if the wind stopped.
Mum and Dad took it on in 2004. We put in the hardstandings, learned the hard way about drainage, and built the pods in 2016 with a joiner from Alnwick using larch off our own land. Kate came back from a decade of hotel work in Edinburgh in 2019 and immediately dug a swimming pond, which nobody asked for and everybody now uses.
Forty years on we are still a farm family who happen to run a campsite. That means the gate gets mended the week it breaks, the shower block gets checked at teatime by somebody whose surname is on the sign, and the field is not full because we would rather it never was.
— Kate, Michael and Jean Armstrong
The land, in order
Eighty years, abbreviated.
- 1946 The Armstrongs arrive Great-grandad takes the tenancy at Swinhoe on his return from the Navy. Sheep, barley and a house with no electricity until 1958.
- 1987 The first tent A family from Durham ask if they can pitch on the top field. Grandad says yes, charges them two pounds, and forgets to stop.
- 1991 The shelter belt goes in A hundred sycamore, alder and Scots pine along the western boundary. It is the single best decision anyone here has made.
- 2004 Michael and Jean take it on Mains water to every field, the first hardstandings, and three wet summers spent learning what land drainage actually costs.
- 2016 The pods Six larch pods off our own trees, built with a joiner from Alnwick. They let us stay open through October for the first time.
- 2019 Kate comes home After ten years in Edinburgh hotels. Within a month she has dug a swimming pond and rewritten the whole way we do arrivals.
- 2022 The new shower block Underfloor heating, family rooms, 32kW of solar on the roof. The thing guests write to us about most.
What we promise
Four rules we have not broken yet.
Come and be part of it.
Some of our guests have been coming for thirty years. Everyone starts somewhere.
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