Crow Sister, we take most of our holidays camping and when we go to a hotel or B&B, generally wished we'd camped instead. We use a large dome tent with cooker, inside table and portaloo and enough internal distance between ourselves and the children and dog. We used to hike and cycle-camp and go in winter but have become too nesh and old so fill a trailer with our gear now.

However camping sites in the UK fall broadly into two types, the chavtastic holiday park type where you may get someone nice and you may get an asbo family next door, and the anal retentive ones where retired couples curtain twitch because someone hasn't parked their Apollo Apocalypse at the approved angle and tut at anything and anybody that isn't beige.

In between are a few clean but chilled sites that you must never, ever tell anyone about if you find them. The Cool Camping guides are okay but publishing such a guide is the kiss of death to the advertised ambience generally speaking. We were members of The CCC for a few years purely to extend camping possibilities but most are open to the public and/or resemble a garden of remembrance.
A camping club folk section sounds like country dancing to kumbaya. I only know one person who attended such a gathering and he sold the caravan he'd just bought immediately afterwards saying he was never going again.