Campsites and Glamping With a Swimming Pool
A pool is the one facility that reliably turns a wet week into a tolerable one with children. It is also rarer than people expect: of every site we list, 70 have one, and 53 of those are indoor.
Published 19 August 2026
Swimming pools sit at the boundary between camping and the holiday-park world, which is why they are unevenly distributed. A small farm site will never have one. A larger site with a reception building and a hundred pitches often does. That makes "campsite with a pool" a genuinely useful filter and an awkward one, because the sites that have them are not always the sites that come up when you search for glamping.
What we found
| Type | Sites |
|---|---|
| Indoor pool | 53 |
| Outdoor pool | 6 |
| Any pool recorded | 70 |
The indoor–outdoor split is the striking part, and it runs the opposite way to intuition. In a country with British summers, sites that have invested in a pool have overwhelmingly invested in a covered one, which is the right call, and the reason an indoor pool is worth paying for.
The sites
Sites with a swimming pool
Every site we list with a pool recorded, best-rated first.
See all 70 sites (61 more not shown here).
Where they are
Pools cluster where large sites cluster, and on our data that is not where most people would guess. Northern Ireland has the most by a distance, with 23 sites recording a pool, followed by Kent (7), Dorset (6), the Isle of Wight (5) and Hampshire (5). The traditional West Country holiday coast barely registers: Devon and Cornwall between them have 3.
- Northern Ireland: the largest county on the site, and the one where lodge parks with a pool are most common.
- Kent: the second-largest county we list, with the large sites to match.
- Dorset and the Jurassic Coast: the traditional family-holiday coast.
- Isle of Wight: a lot of large sites on a small island.
- Hampshire and the New Forest: large sites within reach of the south coast.
The alternative: a hot tub
If the point is warm water rather than swimming, hot tubs are far more widely available. They are the single most common premium feature in UK glamping, and unlike a pool they are usable in February. See glamping with a hot tub, and lodges with hot tubs for the most comfortable version.
For water you do not have to pay for, the best beaches in Kent and the coastal guides cover the free option.
A caveat
Facilities data comes from what each site publishes, and pools get closed for maintenance, refurbishment and, increasingly, running costs. Confirm directly with the site if the pool is the reason you are booking.
Common questions
- How many UK campsites have a swimming pool?
- On our data, 70 of the sites we list have a pool recorded, 53 of them indoor.
- Are campsite pools heated?
- Indoor pools generally are. Outdoor pools in the UK are frequently unheated and are usually only open from around June to August.
- Is a hot tub easier to find than a pool?
- Considerably. Hot tubs are the most common premium feature in UK glamping and are usable year-round, whereas pools are concentrated at larger sites on the traditional holiday coasts.
Keep reading
- From our dataCampsites With a Pub Within Walking DistanceWe measured the distance from every site we list to its nearest pub. These are the campsites and glamping sites with one within a mile, and the counties that do it best.
- From our dataEvery Glamping Site Inside a UK National Park, MappedWe tested every site we list against the national park boundaries. These are the ones genuinely inside a park, and why the answer is smaller than you would think.
- Planning a tripHalf Term Dates 2027: How They Work and Where to GoHow half term dates are set in 2027, why they vary between councils and nations, the fixed dates you can plan around, and where to go with children.