Aerial panorama looking along the wooded river valley, with pitches and lodges laid out across the fields

The valley

From cowpats to canvas: the history of Willow Valley

Willow Valley was a working farm within living memory. Guests who pitched here in the 1960s and 70s still tell us what it was like — cowpats, basic facilities, and the same field lines you can walk today.

Willow Valley Holiday Park1 June 20262 minute read

It’s easy to forget, walking the eleven acres now, that this was a working farm not so long ago. We love hearing from guests who camped here in the 1960s and 70s — back then, the tales go, you’d have to move the cowpats before you could pitch your tent, and “facilities” meant something rather more basic than two shower blocks.

The bones of that farm are still here — old stone, and hedgerows that have marked the same field lines for generations.

Over the years the valley has been gently shaped rather than developed: pitch numbers kept deliberately low so the place never feels crowded, the river left to do its thing, and a genuinely unusual collection of places to sleep added one at a time — bell tents on hand-built decks, a shepherd’s hut, an Airstream, and of course a school bus.

If you stayed here years ago, come and find us. We never tire of hearing what the valley used to be.

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