campsite
Braithwaite Camping & Caravanning Club Site — our Keswick Mountain Festival base
An honest note on the Camping and Caravanning Club site at Braithwaite near Keswick: tidy, well placed for the Keswick Mountain Festival, with a village pub and café and a walkable couple of miles into town.
For the Keswick Mountain Festival weekend we parked the van at the Camping and Caravanning Club site at Braithwaite, a couple of miles west of Keswick at the foot of the Coledale fells.
As always, this is a record of where we stayed rather than a hard recommendation — we use whatever suits the trip.
Why it suited us
Braithwaite is a proper little village rather than a field in the middle of nowhere, which we like. There’s a village pub and a café within a short walk of the site, so you’re not stuck once the van’s parked. The site itself is tidy and well run.
The best bit for a festival weekend is that you can walk into Keswick — it’s roughly two miles. It’s not round the corner, but it’s an easy, level-ish couple of miles and we don’t mind a walk (which, given the rest of this site, won’t surprise you). If you’d rather not, there’s a bus stop about a hundred metres from the entrance. That makes it an easy base for the festival without paying central-Keswick prices or fighting for a town car park.
Worth knowing
It’s a Camping and Caravanning Club site, so you’ll need membership to book — worth it if you use the van often, as the network is large and the per-night rates are reasonable. Being right under the Coledale round, it’s also a cracking base for the north-western fells generally, not just festival weekend.
Check current pitches and prices on the Club site page.
Where we stayed for the Keswick Mountain Festival 8 Peaks.