If you’re looking for an unusual trip away, champing might be for you.
Religious and non-religious people alike are being invited to champ – church camp – in Cumbria at two of the county’s churches.
The champing scheme was launched in 2016 by the Churches Conservation Trust, a charity that protects Anglican churches across the UK at risk of closure.
By offering a unique accommodation and stay for travellers, it also provides churches with lifeline funding to help keep the buildings open and well maintained.
St Luke’s in Clifton, near Workington, is the most recent – and most far north – church to join the champing scheme.
It is currently gearing up for its second season, which takes place from March to October.
Charlotte Bampton, Great Clifton’s parochial church council secretary, said: “We started last year as we were looking for ways to provide the church with more financial support. We’re a very small congregation and we still have services and an active presence in the community.
“It has given us a financial boost and helped us keep going, we were really at a point where we were saying in two years we’re going to have to shut the doors before we joined the champing scheme.”
Last year, over 1,500 people champed in one of 18 of the churches running the scheme in the UK and Wales, helping the CCT generate £86,000 in revenue for churches across the nation.
The 18 buildings part of the scheme are a mixture of active and ‘redundant’ churches, which are still consecrated, but no longer have vicars and church wardens.
Charlotte added that she came across champing after hearing about it on a documentary before putting it to the church council and speaking with the CCT to make the church champer friendly.
Charlotte said: “We’re early on in our champing journey but we’ve had a whole mixture of people including couples and a lady walking and camping along Hadrian’s Wall with her two boys.
“We’ve also had some regular champers who came to try out the church and said it was really good and we were really chuffed with that.
“Anyone can stay too, we wouldn’t say yes or no to anyone based on their feelings to the church of religion. It’s an atmospheric building and people come for that experience, it’s very quiet and peaceful.”
She added that alongside the financial benefits of champing, the scheme had also opened the building up to new people.
She said: “We don’t give a sell of reading the Bible or having to come to church on a Sunday, it’s a space for you to sleep in. It used to be in the past that everybody would be in their local church all the time.
“But I think people are a lot more uncomfortable with the idea of going into a church now because it’s not normal anymore, so it’s trying to normalise being in a church whether you’re there for a spiritual purpose or not and it might inspire people to go into their local church and see what it’s like.”
Sitting outside of the Lake District, Charlotte added that they hope to encourage local people and not just tourists to visit and stay the night in the church.
She said: “This isn’t something we are looking at tourists for, people don’t come to a church for a week-long holiday, they come for a night or two. You don’t have to come from Oxford or Cornwall, come from Workington, come from Whitehaven, come from Carlisle, come soak up being in a church and have that experience that people otherwise have to travel quite far for.
“We live in such a beautiful place, so why not take that opportunity when it’s on your doorstep?”
St Mary’s in Lonsleddale, near Kendal, is the only other champing church in Cumbria and was one of the first churches in the UK to join the scheme. Since then, church runners have had five successful seasons of champing.
John Farmer, chair of friends of St Mary’s Church Longsleddale, said: “We started doing champing as we were considering closing the church, because like all rural churches it’s not as popular to go to church as it used to be.
“We ended up becoming a festival church where we just have a service for the seven festivals of the year and weddings, funerals and baptisms. As part of that, we started looking at ideas to keep the church open and one of the ideas put forward was champing.”
John added that since the church opened its doors to champers, the scheme has been beneficial both financially and socially for the community.
He said: “We’ve made virtually £6,000 for the valley community. The CCT take a small cut but most of it goes to the church, community hall and community itself, we’re actually now approaching £10,000 which we otherwise would not have had.
“It helps churches and community halls stay alive in places like Longsleddale by bringing those funds into the community that otherwise would not be there and from a church mission point of view, it brings people into the church who otherwise would not do so.”
Champing starts at £49 a night and a maximum of five champers can stay in both churches in Cumbria. The CCT also run various schemes for children, which saw children camp for just £1 a night last year. Dogs can also stay for free.
Visitors sleep on camp beds and are provided with camping chairs and lights. Amenities include toilets and a kitchenette in both churches, with St Mary’s amenities in the community hall.
John added: “All sorts of people come to stay in the church, we once had a guy successfully propose to his girlfriend in the church while champing here and we’ve had people from the states come just to be out of the way and have a different view of the country.
“They tend to stay one night and around once a year we will get somebody stay for five nights. Those who stay say they enjoy it and that it’s very different and that the facilities are better than a campsite.”
Fiona Silk, who oversees champing for the CCT said they are hoping to encourage more churches to become a part of the scheme.
She added: “For champing this year, we’re hoping to encourage more people to give it a go, with over a quarter of overnight guests are returning champers it’s definitely something people come back to, wanting to try it again in another church!
“We would also like to see more active churches get involved, opening their doors when they can to overnight guests and helping to aid them become sustainable for the future.”
A stay in one of Cumbria’s two champing churches can be booked on the CCT’s website. St Luke’s opens officially for the season on March 1 and St Mary’s will open on April 3.