Campsites - an Introduction

After many years of camping with tents, a trailer tent and a towed caravan, we found that motorcaravanning gave us the ideal solution (once we didn't have a family to accomodate) for touring and seeing many wonderful places throughout the UK and Europe. 

Whilst some people are happy to free- (or wild-) camp, parking in laybys and out of the way places overnight, we have mostly preferred to stay on authorised campsites in the UK and at campsites and aires in Europe. This has given us a perceived sense of security and often we have found it more sociable meeting some interesting people on our travels. We usually try to arrive somewhere during the late afternoon and occasionally stay at a site for two or three nights to explore the local area more fully or just have a restful day after travelling longer distances.

We rarely book ahead but usually in the UK we phone ahead to see if a pitch is available for the night. We have only had problems finding a suitable place to stay in high season or holiday weekends near coastal resorts and usually haven't had to travel far inland to find a suitable place. 

Note that descriptions of sites are our own personal observations and sometimes situations may have changed from when we stayed there.

Use the links below to find . . .  

In the UK we have found that to get largest choice of sites it is worth belonging to both the Caravan and Motorhome Club (CMC) and the Camping & Caravanning Club (CCC) which as well as operating full facility sites usually open to non-members they have several thousand small "certificated locations" (CMC) and "Certificated Sites" (CCC) sites for members only, limited to five caravans or motorhomes (but may have tent campers as well) at reasonable nightly fees. Other guidebooks are available that list the more commercial sites with bars, pools etc but personally we tend to avoid such sites. Most site co-ordinates are available from websites such as Archies and UK Campsites co.uk as well as the main club sites for satnavs. They also have useful Android and Apple apps free to members.

In Europe we use various guidebooks and many lists available from various websites

 last update 29 Sep 2020