Glamping in Dorset

If you’re looking for a family-friendly holiday, we cannot recommend camping and glamping highly enough. Okay, okay – so we may be a little biased but, seriously, we know plenty of families whose kids prefer staying in a tent near Tunbridge Wells to touring Tuscany. If you’re asking yourself what it is about camping that is so exciting to kids, perhaps a spot of family-friendly glamping will remind you of its charms. Glamping is camping with bells on and the perfect way to try camping for the first time or to reacquaint yourself with its pleasures. If your kids are keen to camp, but you’re not so sure (or vice versa) then glamping is the perfect halfway house offering all the pleasures of life in the great outdoors with none of the hassle. You won’t have to pitch a tent and, if you don’t want to ‘go without’ on your holiday, you don’t have to. These days you can go glamping and sleep in proper beds with luxury linens, you can have an en-suite bathroom and a plug socket for the hair straighteners – if you want one.

It’s our experience that kids love the adventure of sleeping under canvas or in a glamping pad with necessarily pint-sized proportions. Step in to a shepherd’s hut and it’s like it’s been made for them. But most of the adventure, for kids and adults alike, is in the great outdoors of course. On site, kids can play outside all day and enjoy the relative freedom that campsite life allows – running free, making friends, building dens, bug hunting, pond dipping and more. Cooking and eating al fresco, watching the stars come out and toasting marshmallows on the campfire all add to the fun. If you’ve got time for anything else, you’ll want to know if there are family-friendly attractions near your glamping site. When it comes to Dorset, you can rest assured. The 95 miles of Jurassic Coastline offers all the activity you’ll need with fossil-strewn beaches where you can treasure-hunt all day, shallow waters for swimming in some of its bays and all the fun of the fair in the seaside resorts of Swanage, Weymouth and Lyme Regis. There’s also Corfe Castle, Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre, the Swanage Railway and a museum in virtually every town with activities laid-on for kids too.

As well as being fantastic for a family-friendly holiday, there’s plenty of opportunity for adults-only glamping in Dorset too – whether you’re looking for a romantic holiday or a trip for friends. Look out for adults-only glamping sites if you want a break from the kids but also consider booking your glamping break for mid-week or weekends outside of the school holidays. Glamping sites with just one or two shepherd’s huts or glamping pads can be great for romantic breaks or groups of friends who expect to be staying up late. With candles, campfire and cosy accommodation, glamping is a great time to catch up and chill out away from the distractions of modern life. And if it’s romance you’re after, Dorset has history with Jane Austen setting the part of her novel Persuasion, where love is rekindled, in seaside Lyme Regis.

Dorset is full of days out and things to do that are perfect for adults too. The start of the South West Coast Path national trail is in Studland on the Dorset coast and if you’re a serious walker, you can get some miles under the belt on this well-signposted route. The trail takes you past some of Dorset’s best-known sites including Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door and close to village pubs which are perfect for pit stops. Inland there are castles and heritage sites to explore including Thomas Hardy’s Cottage. Foodies will love a trip to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage too where you can feast on local produce or even sign up to a cookery class.

When it comes to the history of Dorset, the famous Jurassic Coast is the first place you should start. The awe-inspiring, dramatic cliffs, formed some 185 million years ago, tell a tale of bygone eras when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The Dorset Tourist Board are always quick to claim they’re the home of the ‘real’ Jurassic Park and, while the likelihood of getting chased by a T-Rex is low, there’s a very decent chance of finding prehistoric fossils and gigantic footprints on the beaches. Kimmeridge Bay, Charmouth, and Lyme Regis are all good places to head out on a fossil-finding mission, and if you need a little help from the experts, there are plenty of guided walks throughout the year. For dramatic and iconic rock formations, you might like to visit Old Harry Rocks near Studland or Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove.

Back inland, history continues to come thick and fast, with the likes of Cerne Abbas—where a chalky, club-wielding giant is carved into the hillside—and the largest hill fort in all of Europe at Maiden Castle. There’s the medieval St Catherine’s Chapel at Abbotsbury, where you can soak up Dorset views and an eclectic range of castles and country houses all across the county. Plus, you can indulge in Dorset’s rich literary heritage—this is, after all, Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, the fabled backdrop for novel after novel, with many of his grassy vales, pebbly beaches and sheep-dotted heaths unchanged to this day. More recently, Dorset provided inspiration for the gripping Broadchurch television series. Creator and writer, Chris Chibnall, claims he wrote the series as a “love letter” to the Jurassic Coast. It’s a love that we at Hipcamp are happy to share.

If your idea of glamping in Dorset is all about being by the seaside, you’ll want to choose one of our glamping sites with easy access to the beach. Thankfully there are plenty of them: some are on cliff tops with sea views and a scramble down to a cove, some are within reach of Dorset’s well-loved seaside resorts and some are steps from the sand or shingle. But wherever you choose to go glamping in Dorset, you’re never too far from the sea and who can resist the lure of a seaside resort? Buckets and spades, fish and chips and Punch and Judy shows have been adding to the attractiveness of a holiday by the sea ever since the Victorians invented them.

Starting in the east of Dorset, bustling Bournemouth is a big-hitter in terms of attractions. It’s got miles of golden sands, a pier, an aquarium, fun fair rides, amusements and a zip line. Just along the coast is Poole, world famous for its harbour, and more quayside than seaside with watersports and ferries ready to whisk you across to Brownsea Island, the birthplace of the scouts, and the Purbeck peninsula where the Jurassic Coast begins. Choose glamping near Swanage for a place on Purbeck itself. It makes a convenient base as the gateway to the Jurassic Coast with all the fun of a seaside resort thanks to its Blue Flag beach, watersports, shops and eateries.

Some of the best and wildest stretches of the Dorset coast are on the Purbeck peninsula, south and west of Swanage, and the next resort town is much-larger Weymouth. Midway along the coast, it's a great place to glamp if you want to explore all that Dorset has to offer. It has a modern town centre and a beach-hut lined seashore with traditional entertainment from donkey rides to Punch and Judy shows. Lyme Regis, in the far west of the county on the border with Devon, is a smaller and more genteel seaside resort. Its historic buildings line the streets down to The Cobb, an age-old harbour wall. It has a café-lined beach that’s perfect for paddling, swimming and sandcastle-building.

• Hunt for fossils beneath the mighty cliffs of the Jurassic Coast.
• Walk the clifftop footpath and enjoy the views of Old Harry Rocks and Durdle Door.
• Hike to St Catherine's Chapel for some of the best views in the county.
• Eat the freshest fish and chips at Weymouth harbour.
• Take a day-trip into Poole and catch the ferry out to Brownsea Island.
• Explore the ruins of Corfe Castle.
• Visit Thomas Hardy’s Cottage.
• Pick up some fresh fish to cook on your campfire.
• Relax on your glamping site with a copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
• Walk along The Cobb in historic Lyme Regis.