On the first day of my journey through heaven and hell, Sarah Chaplin-Brice met us at the door saying: “I will show you the facilities. It takes 19 seconds. There's the dining area, loo, shower, and you sleep upstairs. That's it. Ha. Ha. Ha!”

Trevor the turkey strutted in the field beyond the barn door. A log-stove hogged one corner and outside ran a stream I could actually hear. Upstairs, eight shiny mattresses stood on end like so many soldiers. Around me, rough stone walls. Slate roof. Wooden floor. Chilled air. Skylight. Nineteen seconds.

Welcome to the world of camping barns. The accommodation is basic, but you stay dry if it rains and although facilities are meagre, the locations of these magnificently gaunt buildings are remote and beautiful. And the cost? Well, that's the other thing: £7 a night. How can you lose?

Friend Peter and I were testing this very question through an inventive new scheme that links several Lake District camping barns using specially produced walking maps that create two, three, or four-night voyages into the wild countryside around Keswick in the Lake District.

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Walk all day, then in the evening fetch up at one of these converted buildings that hang like rough pearls on the string of your own footslogged travels - and slob out. You can book online, pay beforehand, shoulder your pack and sleeping bag... and off you go.

So that's what we did, arriving that first night at rambling Low Bridge End Farm, in the remote hamlet of St John's in the Vale, where wild-haired Sarah made us so welcome with her jokes, jollity, cakes and jam that we volunteered to walk Tess the dog for her while waiting for the pub to open.

Next morning we packed our stove, plates, cups, clothes and sleeping bags. Then we wolfed down a trouser-busting breakfast (£6.50) and set off up the valley following laminated maps and detailed route descriptions - which proved decent enough but occasionally flawed, each sheet taking us to the next barn via one or two whimsical ambiguities, but also loads of grand sights.

Anne Graves at Catbells, our second barn, made us welcome, showing us a similarly beautiful old-stone building with a raised sleeping platform and mattresses, a lavatory and shower block a few yards away - hot water by meter, roughly a pound a shower. We bought coal in a bucket (£2) and set a blaze going while outside, ducks quacked, hens strutted, fields smouldered silently green, and distant fells dusted with spring snow cupped a sheltering valley.

If there is an afterlife, there would definitely be a place in it for this kind of experience, which has to do with earning pleasures - of walking across fine but hard countryside so that your skin tingles with sweat and cold air; then heaving what's left of your body into a comfy seat while beautiful bar staff ply you with good things and smile as if you matter. Then back to another empty barn that was, again, ours alone (they can share eight to 12, but on these nights we hit lucky).

Next morning, we set off again for another day's walking, this time harder, climbing a total of 700m (2,300ft) up Catbells mountain and along a peak wittily called High Spy. The distances we could see were immense and filled with lakes, rivers, mountains and teetering vales, all wrapped in a sense of adventure that we just would not have felt had we been heading for a hotel, a cosy B&B even.

It wasn't exactly hellish, our third night. More a kind of uneasy purgatory. The only café in Rosthwaite was closed on Wednesdays; the “local” pub, the Riverside Bar, had no hand-basin in the urinals and sold bar wine at restaurant prices.

But the final disappointment was that we shared Dinah Hoggus barn, just outside the tiny village, with six university students. They were lovely blokes, but having a bunch of jolly vodka-boys “tiptoe” back into the dorm at two in the morning somehow stole our accumulated serenity.

Next day, another great walk completed the circle taking us back to our cars, and Tess the dog, and lovely, jolly Sarah. It had been a terrific trip, though next time I would probably book sole usage of the barns, which is still cheap. It's not that I don't like strangers, just that our kind of journey dwelt in the land of boyish make believe. And that's best done alone.

Need to know

A Lakeland Camping Barn (01946 758198, www.lakelandcampingbarns.co.uk) costs from £7pp per night plus power and heating. Anyone can book a barn for sole use (multiply the maximum number the barn can accommodate by £7), which is a requirement for families with children under 5 and pet owners

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