The stone buildings scattered around Pindale Farm lend the place a lovely, traditional olde-England feel. The site has led a varied existence, with previous incarnations including a lead mine and a working farm, and some of the buildings date back to the 14th century. The main - reportedly haunted - farmhouse pre-dates 1340 and is now home to campsite owner Alan Medhurst, who has transformed the buildings - a barn, an engine house, and a powder house used to store explosives - into bunkhouses, toilets, and shower blocks.

The Peak District in England's Midlands is the busiest National Park in all Europe. While that may be a surprising statistic to some, those who have experienced its incredible diversity - from peaty bogs and vertiginous cliffs to green fields and billowing hills - will nod knowingly. And right in the middle of this lush, protected countryside is Fieldhead Campsite in Edale, a small but perfectly formed rambler's paradise with access to some of the best walking the district has to offer.

What can you do when crowds of people - all total strangers - insist on traipsing through your garden? Of course, this isn't your average garden, but 970 acres of prime Derbyshire farmland in one of the most renowned valleys in the Peak District. It's also home to Robert and Sarah Helliwell, National Trust tenants and lifelong farmers. For the transient visitors, however, it's something else entirely - the main thoroughfare of the Pennine Way.

If you like your skies big, your views panoramic, and think those who seek the shelter of walls and hedges should just bring longer tent pegs, then Common Barn Farm is going to be right up your street. Actually, it's up a humungous hill on the edge of the Peak District.The five-acre camping field -which starts off flat before dropping spectacularly away - commands the heights above Macclesfield and all points north-west.

It can be a nightmare finding a decent working sheep farm to camp on in the middle of the Peak District National Park. Luckily Shallow Grange, just south of Buxton, manages to combine both sheep (around 200 ewes, to be precise) and tents amid 110 acres of grassy farmland and rolling hills.

The biggest challenge for those camping at the Royal Oak isn't wrestling with a sloping field (it's flat); being kept awake by traffic (no nearby main road); or finding things to do (it's slap bang in the middle of the Peak District). No, it's chomping their way through one of the award-winning pies sold at the pub.You could probably actually camp in one of these monsters — they're that big. Packed with fine ingredients, they make for a filling reward after a day's play in the Peaks, especially if washed down with one of the excellent local draught ales.

Once upon a time, Rivendale was an upland farm, before morphing (with a little help from human hands) into a massive industrial quarry. When this was closed down, nature began to reclaim the site, until the wild brambles were cleared away to finish its metamorphosis into today's campsite - a perfect balance between the man-made and the natural.

If you like your camping raw then you'll adore this spot located on the Derbyshire Limestone (aka White Peak). Owner Bob Small has done his level best to make limited comfort concessions to people staying on their working family farm -not because he's a sadist but because he believes it adds value, character, and authenticity to the experience. And we believe he's right.

Pass up a short drive, through a gate, across a small courtyard bordered with Mowers, and you'll discover a tiny treat. Bitch Hank Farm's campsite runs to a mere half acre, with just 14 pitches, so the words 'sprawling' and 'rammed' never get an airing here. You can plop yourself down in one of the many spots with a view of distant Beeston Castle, or hunker down under one of the apple trees. Loos and showers, meanwhile, arc handily housed in a brick outbuilding right next to the firmhouse.

Tucked away in a valley between two huge ridges - the Long Mynd and Stiperstones — the youth hostel at the hamlet of Bridges was opened in 1931, just a year after the YHA was formed. In common with a handful of the association's hostels, an area has been set aside for campers - here it's a bijou lawn flanked by trees and topped off at one end by a retro caravan.