Cycling in the tracks of Britain’s camping pioneers from Oxford to Surrey | Camping holidays

Skylarks call out a cascading trill as I pedal between the pink and white hawthorn blossoms that make my path look like a May Day parade. I’m on the outskirts of Oxford, a city I thought I knew well, yet as I follow the National Cycle Route 57 on the e-bike I’d picked up in Jericho, it feels as though I’ve discovered a secret passageway.

This year the Camping and Caravanning Club (CCC) turns 125 – and I’m celebrating with a 60-mile cycling and camping trip, leaving from the city where the organisation was born and heading to Walton-on-Thames to stay at one of the oldest campsites in the CCC network.

The CCC began life as the Association of Cycle Campers before becoming the club it is today. It all started when founder Thomas Hiram Holding, already a keen camper, was visiting his friend Rev EC Pitt-Johnson’s Oxford home in 1901 and they decided there was enough demand and interest in the hobby to form a club. They elected each other president and secretary respectively and the rest, as they say, is history.

Back then, Holding had a “safety cycle” – not dissimilar to a modern-day bike, which replaced the tricky-to-master penny farthing. He proudly invented much camping gear, too, from early lightweight tents and folding poles to cycle touring bags. “Holding understood the health and wellbeing benefits people gained from camping,” explains Jo Cartwright, archivist at the CCC, when I tell her my e-bike plan, “so I think he would’ve embraced any new form of transport.”

While all-singing, all-dancing motorhomes and caravans are ubiquitous these days, and along with pre-pitched glamping options are squeezing the space left for regular campers, the CCC assure me that humble tents are very much still welcomed on its sites. So with mine firmly stowed on my e-bike, I set off, deciding to break my journey with an overnight stop at Bella Vista Camping in Radnage, a family-run club site that sits on the Chiltern Cycleway.

Quiet roads lead me east from Oxford toward Wheatley and Thame, where I stop at the Old Fisherman to grab a sandwich and coffee, before continuing on the Phoenix Trail (part of Route 57), its straight lines a nod to its former life as the disused railway track to Princes Risborough. Red kites replace skylarks as I glide on the easy track away from any road traffic, passing the old station building at Bledlow and going under the former railway bridge and past the abandoned platform where Towersey Halt stop, closed since 1963, would have been.

Before he started the Association of Cycle Campers, Holding’s method of camping – after a childhood wagon trek on the prairies of North America had him hooked – was by canoe in Ireland. That was until a friend of his in England announced that he and his wife were planning to spend a week camping by tandem bike in Britain, and asked him to come to help with attaching his kit to the frame – after which he wrote, “We succeeded,” and declared in his book, Cycle and Camp, published in 1897, “There was something in it.”

While more people arrive in motorhomes than by bike these days, I’m pleased to see that Bella Vista Camping still has a huge field for tents, next to a paddock of Soay sheep and alpacas, and there are hot showers and proper toilets in a big mess tent.

After dinner at the Crown Pub, just a five-minute walk away, and a quiet night’s sleep while my bike battery charged, I am ready for the next part of my cycle tour to Walton-on-Thames. Opened in 1913, the Walton CCC campsite was described in a Golden Jubilee Souvenir booklet from 1963 as a place full of “homemade tents, bamboo poles, hurricane lamps and wood fires”.

Curious at what I’d encounter now, I leave the highs of the Chilterns and Route 57 to bear south on country lanes that skirt the edge of High Wycombe, through the busy streets of the Thames-side towns of Marlow and Cookham, and on narrow cycle paths between Maidenhead and Eton. When I stop for lunch at the Crocus cafe in Dorney, I’m amazed at how curious people are about my set-up. I feel a little like Holding, showcasing another way of holidaying in Britain.

Windsor Great Park is an unexpected highlight – its easy roads contrasting starkly with the quite hairy gravel tracks I descend into Egham. But then designated bike lanes through Staines and Chertsey see me ticking off my remaining miles with ease.

A final treat is a ferry crossing over the Thames at Shepperton to Weybridge – fitting given that the very first campsite in the CCC network used to sit on one of the islands here (it closed in 1909).

Given that the Walton campsite has no facilities, it’s primarily frequented by motorhomes and caravans that have their own chemical toilets. I’ve brought my own eco-friendly option, though, in the form of a Poopaloo dry-powder toilet. My pitch was next to a small hut filled with sepia photographs of tents from 100 years ago.

That night I read Holding’s The Campers Handbook, published in 1908, and chuckle at the description of the correct attire for female cycle campers including a skirt “that finishes three inches off the ground, with no slippery lining to avoid catching on the knickerbockers”.

The next day, without a knickerbocker (or skirt) in sight, I undertake one of Holding’s favoured activities: canoeing. Swapping pedals for oars, thanks to owner Andy of Hampton Court Paddle Sports, which is located just a 10-minute (3-mile) cycle from my tent, I spend most of the day on the water, sightseeing at a slow pace, stopping for falafel at Mezzet Box (beats the fried herring and boiled trout of Holding’s day), and ending with a drink at the Anglers, built on these banks in 1870, my canoe tied up beside my table.

Things have undoubtedly changed for campers over the past 125 years. The tents – A-frames and “wigwams” made of silk – have been swapped for nylon tunnels with inflatable poles, campervans have overtaken bicycles, and even, at Walton, the Thames itself has been rerouted so that it no longer sweeps by the pitches. But not all change is bad. Back then, strict gender rules meant that, as a lone woman, I wouldn’t have been permitted to do this trip, never mind in leggings. And an e-bike made the whole experience (and hills) much more enjoyable.

Holding called cycle camping a “power” that helped popularise camping – and the CCC’s membership reflects that, having grown from its initial 150 to more than 300,000 households. And though camping using a bicycle is now a minority pursuit, after my weekend tracing old routes and visiting the first campsite, I like to think that within the secret passageways of towns and cities, there are those of us who realise that the best journeys are still powered by pedals and curiosity.

eBike hire was provided by Bainton Bikes in Oxford (e-bikes from £65 for 3 days). A pitch was given by Bella Vista Radnage (from £19 a night) and Walton-on-Thames campsite (from £20 for two nights members, £35 non-members). Annual CCC membership from £56.95