Cancellations

I think a lot of members would find it useful and it could also reduce over booking, if a certain number of pitches are kept available as freedom to roam. This would mean that you could just drive without having to worry about being in a certain place by a certain time. Just play it by ear and when you feel tired, you look for a site to stay the night. That's what caravanning used to be all about. If pitches were always available, there would be no need to pre-book at all!

That would be very nice, but what would happen if you were the last to turn up when all those pitches had been taken? How would you feel then? The club can't afford to leave some pitches open just in case units do arrive when they can fill them by taking advance booking.

I think a lot of members would find it useful and it could also reduce over booking, if a certain number of pitches are kept available as freedom to roam. This would mean that you could just drive without having to worry about being in a certain place by a certain time. Just play it by ear and when you feel tired, you look for a site to stay the night. That's what caravanning used to be all about. If pitches were always available, there would be no need to pre-book at all!

That would be very nice, but what would happen if you were the last to turn up when all those pitches had been taken? How would you feel then? The club can't afford to leave some pitches open just in case units do arrive when they can fill them by taking advance booking.

i agree Nellie, although its a shame that the 'touring' ethos of the club (in its purest, impromptu state) has been lost.

this is where i think the LNA or 'parking' areas could be used to accommodate genuinely 'touring' vans.....after all, i think they would have as much 'right' to this space as a non-paying 'visitor'.

a set rate of (say) a tenner would attract one-nighters and yeild income.

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

Write your comments here...Happy days, we started the shortage by pre booking pitches, pity we can't go back to good old days when touring was fun, but as cars get smaller and vans get bigger seasonal pitches become more popular it is going to get worse so fine people enjoy whilst you can

We used to just turn up and had no trouble finding sites in a given area but it simply got more difgicult to the point we always book now. Have to agree the clubs problem is we need more pitches. I do not think affiliated sites is the answer and new sites are expensive but needed. 

The C& CChave franchised sites which might be a good idea for the CC. Members get more sites and the site get the benefits of the clubs advertising and booking system so both shpuld win.

WW, i agree with your post....the club needs more sites/pitches, however there are other providers in the market place.

many folk restrict themselves to certain areas of the market by applying certain caveats....

.....i could never stay on a CL/CS

.....i could never stay on site without showers/toilets

.....i could only ever stay on a CC site

....i could never use C&CC sites

...i could never use a commercial site

once you start to narrow down selections of sites, availability becomes tighter.

campers who are more flexible about site type and provider are more likely to find pitches (in their desired area) even in the more crowded periods.

I agree BB, the wider the scope the less chance of disapointment; and greater the chance of seeing / learning something new......

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

...But apart from the usual honeypots its seems its only W/end  that are short of pitches?

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

...But apart from the usual honeypots its seems its only W/end  that are short of pitches?

...but 'tourers' arent likely to go away on a monday and return (conveniently) on a friday.....they tour.

a few days here, on a bit, a few more days, and so on.....sometimes for months on end.....

in order to do this, you will inevitibly straddle many, many weekends, which is where the issue is...

nothing to do with 'weekenders' per se, merely that the 'conditioning' we have these days is that everyone should book....and the earlier the better.....

so we get the bow wave on booking day where huge swathes of the cc estate is covered off in a day or two.

fitting a tour around whats left can be tricky (weekends) if one doesnt join in and try to book day one....

but lets face it, who wants to 'tour' to a specific schedule?

where's the spontenaiety?

if you like a place, youll want to stay a bit longer....if you run out of interesting things to do, you'll want to move on anead of time...

this is not easy to do on sites in this country, and you cant book 'site 2' while on site 1, as its likely to be booked....

unfortunately, this is the way of things.....so we dont tend to tour in an impromptu way in the uk, just doing specific one/two destination trips.

we sometimes mix in a few CLs as there is likely to be a bit more choice when looking for the next stop....and leave our 'rambling' trips for over the channel.

And as you already know there is not the space for the "old-fashioned" type of just touring sites unless you use cls,and the one we have been using over Xmas ,the owner was saying they now tend to have Sat-Sat/Sun bookings that in the peak periods sometimes  means that an odd night with one extra  ,and people just "touring" are now vary rare as most want to book to be sure of a pitch