Lodge Farm Certificated Location: "Wonderfully Rural" Top 5 Page for this destination Barnard Castle Hotel Tip by nickandchris

We were booked for a couple of nights on this site purely because of it's wonderful location in the countryside south of Barnard Castle. It was also somewhere we wished to explore on the motorbike, there being some serious moorland routes around here. Alas, the bike had a puncture so all travelling had to be done in the van. We did manage to drive the route from Reeth in Yorkshire over the moors to here in the motorhome so we didn't feel we had missed out too much.

Unique Qualities: The site is a couple of large fields, complete with it's own flock of black sheep and nothing else. We were the only visitors and had the place to ourselves. The views were lovely and we managed to sit out to appreciate them.

The site has a very minor road running along one side of it which had more traffic on it than we would have expected. It didn't disturb us and really, it was very quiet. Even the sheep didn't seem to baa and they cropped incredibly quietly!!

The down side was that the cost was £7 a night and we weren't allowed to use the chem disposal without using one particular type of toilet fluid in our emptying cassette. The owner was adamant his septic tank wouldn't take anything else as it would wreck the decomposing process in his septic tank. He even telephoned the place we had bought our fluid from but couldn't get a reasonable answer as to whether it was suitable. In the end, he gave us some fluid, which you can buy on his site (for a price) but we opted not to empty in the end and went home with a full tank. Anyone arriving with a full toilet, be warned, you WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO EMPTY IF YOU ARE USING THE WRONG FLUID. The owner did say we should have been told when we booked, which would have been fair enough.

Still a beautiful location with plenty of walking possibilities.

Address: Lodge Farm, Scargill, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham.
Comparison: least expensive
Directions: Heading west,turn off A66 after B6277, sp. Reeth, Scargill. In 2 miles fork left, sp. Scargill. Site on left
Phone: 01833 621238
Price: less than US$20
Theme: Campground