Rowter Farm Campsite, Castleton

📍 Peak District  🚐 Campervan Stay  📅 2024 & 2025

A Base for Exploring the Peaks

When we first visited the Peak District in 2024, we wanted a campsite that would put us right in the middle of everything without feeling like a big commercial holiday park.

Rowter Farm looked just the job.

Sitting at the top of Winnats Pass, above Castleton and with Mam Tor practically looming over the camping field, it was perfectly positioned for exploring this part of the Peaks.

We love a farm campsite too. Give us a field, some dry-stone walls and a working farm over rows of regimented pitches any day.

So Rowter went on the itinerary.

We liked it enough that when we returned to the Peak District with friends in 2025, Rowter went straight back on it.

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Eventually Found It. Immediately Loved It.

Finding Rowter for the first time wasn’t entirely straightforward.

The directions we’d received with our booking were a little confusing and there was definitely an element of “Are you SURE it’s up here?” as Vinny made his way through the Peaks.

But eventually we found the farm.
And as soon as we drove in, it looked perfect.

This was very obviously a working farm that happened to have a camping field, rather than a campsite designed to look rustic.
Dry-stone walls divided the landscape, sheep occupied the surrounding fields, farm dogs announced activity from the barns and Mam Tor provided a spectacular backdrop.
There were tractors, quad bikes and members of three generations of the farming family coming and going as they got on with their working day.

Nothing polished.
Nothing pretending to be something it wasn’t.

Our kind of place.

Pick a Spot, Park Vinny, Put the Kettle On

There are no regimented marked pitches here. You find yourself a suitable space in the field and make yourself at home.

We LOVE that.

When we arrived on our first visit, the weekend crowd was already starting to build and the field was fairly busy. We found ourselves a spot towards the top beside one of the dry-stone walls.
We had Mam Tor in one direction and the farm stretching away in the other, with walkers passing along the nearby track throughout the day.

The only downside?
Wind.

It was pretty breezy all weekend and we’d managed to select a particularly enthusiastic spot for it.
When the weekend campers disappeared on Sunday and the field emptied, we took advantage of the extra choice and moved Vinny further down onto lower ground where things were considerably more sheltered.

That’s another benefit of informal camping.
No pitch number.
No problem.

Just move house.

Basic. Rustic. Completely Functional.

This is where Rowter seems to take a bit of a kicking in some online reviews.
So let’s deal with it.
The facilities are basic.

The toilets and showers are housed in the farm buildings, so expect whitewashed stone walls, draughty doors and the occasional spider who appears to have appointed himself facilities manager.

From memory, the ladies had two toilets and one shower.

The shower room itself was HUGE — more like having a bathroom to yourself than a campsite cubicle — and while another shower would certainly help at busy times, the one provided worked perfectly well.

It was hot, reliable and there was plenty of space.

At weekends there could occasionally be a wait, particularly when large groups of young walkers were staying, but across two visits we never had a serious problem using the facilities.

I’m not generally a fan of paying extra for showers, but the current published charge is £1 for three minutes. Given the relatively inexpensive camping fees, I can forgive that — particularly as I had enough time, plenty of hot water and wasn’t trying to wash while performing the naked Hokey Cokey in a cubicle the size of a wardrobe.

There’s also a washing-up area and communal fridge/freezers.

And one particularly useful bonus on a non-electric campsite: there are sockets in this area where campers can charge phones and small devices.

At the entrance to the camping field there’s a large skip. It could become pretty full after a busy weekend, but we saw the family clearing rubbish from it during our stays so there was room for campers to continue using it.

Luxury facilities? – No.
Everything we actually needed? – Yep.

Two Visits, Countless Walks and Several Seasons a Day

The thing we remember most about Rowter is simply being in the landscape.
From our pitch we watched some beautiful sunsets and saw the weather repeatedly swallow Mam Tor before revealing it again.

Sunshine.
Cloud.
Mist.
Threatening skies.
Sunshine again.

The Peaks can apparently squeeze several seasons into the time it takes to make a cup of coffee.

Walking is obviously a huge part of staying here.

Mam Tor is the headline attraction and there’s a route through the farm towards Castleton, but I didn’t actually tackle either.
Big, steep hills aren’t particularly friendly to my back, so while other campers headed towards the famous routes, I took Hendricks and Boë exploring the network of paths and fields surrounding the farm.
And sometimes having to take the easier route is actually a blessing.

It makes you take the path less travelled.

Across two visits I don’t think we walked the same route twice. We passed old mines, crossed open countryside, dodged cows and sheep and found ourselves surrounded by those beautiful Peak District hills without having to follow the busiest trails.

We did hear people complaining that the walk back up from Castleton was steep and rocky.
Considering Rowter is situated at the top of Winnats Pass, we’re not entirely sure what they were expecting.
An escalator perhaps?

And Then There Were the Dogs…

For Hendricks and Boë, Rowter provided sniffing opportunities in practically every direction.

Obviously livestock means vigilance is essential.
Hendricks isn’t remotely interested in sheep.
Boë very much is.

When the campsite was quiet, being able to give Hendricks a little freedom made life considerably easier. Anyone who has tried tethering two dogs beside a campervan will understand the inevitable result: one moves, the other changes direction and suddenly Hendricks is an unwilling participant in a bondage demonstration organised by Boë.

The dogs also provided us with a steady stream of visitors.

Boë has perfected a peculiar warble/cry whenever someone walks past because there’s a possibility they might stop and cuddle her.

Annoyingly, it works.

What About the Noise?

We saw plenty of groups of young walkers during our stays, presumably college or Duke of Edinburgh groups, but we certainly didn’t experience the raucous behaviour mentioned in some reviews.

The teenagers we encountered were polite and well behaved.

Perhaps we’re simply less sensitive to campsite noise. We actually quite like hearing people enjoying themselves and don’t expect a camping field to descend into monastic silence at bedtime.
We’ve experienced considerably worse behaviour from grown adults — including drunken pensioners — on other campsites.

We Already Have

Perhaps the most useful thing we can tell you about Rowter Farm is this:

We went back.

After our first stay in 2024, we returned in 2025 with a convoy of campervan friends and once again used Rowter as our base for exploring this area before moving on to another part of the Peak District.
And once again, it did exactly what it said on the tin.
We know Rowter gets some rough reviews, particularly about the basic facilities and occasionally the welcome.

Our experience simply doesn’t match some of them.

The family aren’t hugely chatty, but they’re also running a working hill farm. When we’ve needed something, we’ve found them perfectly accommodating and helpful when approached politely. The farmer could regularly be seen disappearing past on a tractor or quad bike, smiling and waving at campers.

And the farmer’s wife struck us as exactly that — a busy, hard-working farmer’s wife and probably the mortar keeping all those stone walls standing.

This isn’t The Darling Buds of May.

If you want yellow coats, go to Butlin’s.

Rowter won’t suit everybody. If you want immaculate shower blocks, electric hook-up and manicured pitches, we’d probably recommend looking elsewhere.
But if you want a reasonably priced campsite in a spectacular location, don’t mind the odd spider or tractor and understand that basic doesn’t mean bad, it’s a cracking base for exploring the Peaks.

We were raised on campsites like this.
For us, this is real camping.
And yes.
We’d happily go back for a third visit.