Weekenders

Many families must surely have their non-holiday-periods week-ends regulated by children/grandchildren attending school regardless of the adult's work patterns.

Hmm……Monday to Friday🤔 Isn’t that when children are at school. 😁 

Ditto....I had the 'flexibility' of working hours and could work from home, train or hotel...but OH being a teacher kept us locked down to 'term time'...Early retirement saw 'Freedom' from the w/e bookings...although as others haver said we often found a site outside of the clubs main sites...still visit some of the CL's we found....

Neither of us worked Mon to Fri, and no children. Our touring life has been easy, and nowadays cheap. 😁

OP gives no indication of where or when they are looking to go, so it’s difficult to comment really, but most of us know some Sites are very popular and get booked up quickly, others (outside of COVID times) you could just rock up and get a pitch fairly easy. If you want something without having to compromise, it’s best to get booked as early as possible. Chatsworth or YRP,  you need to be really organised and determined😁

As often been pointed out before weekends get a double 'hit', first by those who work Monday to Friday and/or have children at school and then by those who add on a weekend onto their week(s) stay away. 

Also yes I would say Monday to Friday is still the most common working pattern, otherwise why are supermarkets, shopping centres (and most other leisure things) much more busier on weekends?  

The simplest answer to the question posed by the OP is that there are still plenty of people working in this country that own Caravans and Motorhomes and therefore the most common working schedule tends to be Monday to Friday so the only time they can reasonably get away is at the weekends.

We used to do exactly the same 20+ years ago, except we had to ring up to reserve a pitch. 

The club hasn't really expanded the number of sites in total since then, or appears not to have, and they have more members, ergo, more weekend bookings.

20+ years ago we just accepted it if we couldn't get onto a site and booked a CL. Now we tend to only book club sites when we can't get onto a CL in the chosen area.

The new deposit scheme may well have an effect in releasing more pitches at weekends. Personally I doubt it.

As for waiting to nearer the time then that is the preserve of those that have time on their hands. If I was working and could only get away at weekends then I would look elsewhere to ensure I got away.

It is what it is and one just has to work around it, in the same way that you would have to if your foreign holiday wasn't available because all of the hotels had been booked or flights taken. There are plenty of non CAMC sites available and over 2,200 CLs to choose from.

We had four children…..and while they were pre school we did do weekends - either on a farm at Bude or on one of the disused WW2 airfields in North Cornwall. Cheap and simple. It was all we could afford.

After that it was cubs, football practice and matches, ditto rugby, ditto swimming club, music lessons, band practice, friends coming for sleepovers, and all the rest. And as they became teenagers it was please teach me to drive, please can you take me to Nancy’s or Jonny’s party, and can you pick me up at midnight. And for a while I was commuting to work and staying 200 miles away for five days and coming home at 9 pm.on Fridays.Then it was taking 18 year olds to Uni at the start of term, and fetching them back when they were sick. And in between visiting elderly parents who also lived 200 miles away. All normal routine - but caravan weekends were impossible 

We never did caravan weekends again. Do modern parents manage find the time? How?

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