Last month we had our renewal notice for the Camping and Caravanning Club sent through and we have decided not to renew it this year.  I don’t want you to think this was a thoroughly thought through decision, listing pros and cons for both and then rating each pro and con to come up with a scientifically calculated reason for the cancellation.  It was more a case of it popped through the door, it was £30 something pounds and because we are in the 2 clubs one had to go and we’d already renewed the Caravan Club so it was a no brainer.

Both clubs have merits and frustrations in equal proportion.

The CC can be a little bit regimental ( I was going to say anal but didn’t want to offend ) and the C&CC label themselves the “Friendly Club” but lack some of the organisation of the CC.  What we need is a hybrid club that’s well organised and friendly and treats you as adults who know what they are doing.  Ask me to park my Motorhome in the centre of the pitch but don’t tell me to park it in the centre of the pitch and tell me that there is a pitch marker in the centre so park the centre of your Motorhome against that and then show me a diagram of the whole thing.  Wow!!

One of my personal hates of the CC is the way they always refer to Motorhomes as Motor Caravans – why is that?  Just because they are steeped in caravan history doesn’t give them the right to create a new category of Motorhome.

The one big advantage of the C&CC is that booking sites is so much easier and the CC is usually always fully booked for the better sites weeks in advance.  Incidentally my home grown theory on this is that if the CC charged a deposit, as the C&CC do, then their advanced bookings would drop considerably.  I wonder how many no shows they have on a Friday night just because there is a no deposit forfeit.

Some of the facilities on the C&CC sites are not as modern as they should be and both clubs have a problem with determining the correct number of loos, showers etc to cater for the amount of customers. Last weekend we were at the CC site at Bladen Chains and the toilet block had more washing cubicles than showers or loos.  Bad planning or what?

These are some of my thoughts and I’d be very interested to hear yours, so please send them through and we’ll see if we can make a constructive list of the good and the bad ( and of course the ugly ).

Related posts:

1. Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site; Part 1
2. Car Hire; a Caravan Club Scheme
3. Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site; Part 2

There are a great number of outdoor events organised for 2010 and there’s always something for everyone so get planning.

The Caravan Club has put together a list that they have just sent through to their members so for those of you who didn’t receive it here is the link.

Have fun and enjoy.

Related posts:

1. Boat and Caravan Show Visit
2. Boat and Caravan Show
3. Caravan Club vs Camping and Caravanning Club

Hotelpepper.com is a new and free tool that searches all the best hotel sites to bring you the lowest price all from one click. There is no need to search every major website one by one in order to compare all the best deals and availability. We give you all the hotel details, photos, maps and even customer ratings – a real time and money saver.

The site is a sister site of simplymotorhomes and has been made to give people the opportunity to book a hotel at a great price anywhere in the World with a few clicks of the mouse.  When you have a Motorhome you love to travel and sometimes it’s good to travel but stay in a hotel for a change and this site will help you to find the best one at the best rate.

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We went to the Boat and Caravan Show last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed it although as usual found it very tiring.

Apart from just generally having a look around the stalls to see what goodies were on offer we wanted to take a look a good look at the Camping Cheque stand and decide if that was something we wanted to make use of.  I also had this notion that I’d read about the ideal Motorhome layout, a Rapido, and I wanted to have a close look at it to see.

We had a good look at the Camping Cheque and a long chat with the person on the stand and in the end we bought a silver card for £2 and the site book for £1 ( instead of £6 ).  We’re going to give it a go simply because we usually go to France out of season anyway and using the Camping Cheque is the cheapest way to do that and at around £14 per night is a real bargain. The silver card is a new thing that you use instead of the paper cheques and it means you can pay for the cheques electronically and then get them credited to your card when you arrive at the first site.  Easy; I hope.  There are hundreds ( 588 ) sites in Europe to choose from and even a handful in the UK. Have a look at the Camping Cheque site and see for yourselves.

The brand new all singing all dancing Rapido that I thought I’d read about turned out to be a figment of my imagination and doesn’t exist after all.  Never mind, one day.

On the subject of new Motorhomes we did have a look at most of the Manufacturers and Dealers but didn’t see anything that was better than our Autocruise Starseeker thank goodness.

We did the obligatory visit to most of the French site stalls and collected plenty of brochures but of course these have been superceded by the Camping Cheque sites list because we are determined to try as many of these as we can.  We have a 3 week French holiday planned for June and have booked the return ferry but no sites.  I’m a stickler for making site bookings normally but am determined to go on spec this year and see how we get on.  Incidentally we booked the ferry with Norfolkline ( never used them before ) and got a fantastic deal. We booked through the Caravan Club and got the return for the Starseeker plus the two of us for £48 return, going and returning on a Saturday. How good was that!!  Let me know if you’ve got a better deal than that!!

We also bought a couple of items for the house,weirdly, but I guess you do see a lot of innovative stuff at these shows.

We won’t bother going to another show this year but will try this one again next year.

Related posts:

1. Boat and Caravan Show

In the US a lot of companies organise “clothing drives” as a means of encouraging their staff to donate used clothes that are no longer required and these are then passed on to a charity. This video shows how successful they can be.

We do a similar thing here but we either bag them and take them to a charity shop or put them outside the house for collection.  Maybe we should encourage the Caravan Club and the Camping and Caravanning Club to organise recycling clothes bins on their sites.  After all, if you’re anything like me, then I like to have a different wardrobe of clothes for the Motorhome and for the house so I’m just as likely to recycle something on a site as I am at home.

This video is an extremely funny example of how to run a very successful clothing drive by offering a Bud Light in exchange for used clothes.  The problem is that the insatiable appetite for the Bud Light invokes an impulsiveness in the staff as never been seen before.

It’s great, so sit back with a Bud Light ( and a bag of used clothes of course ) and enjoy.

PS.  -  don’t forget to donate the bag of used clothes.

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The Boat and Caravan Show is taking place at the NEC Birmingham between the 23 – 28 February.

Both the Caravan Club and the Camping and Caravanning Club were offering discounted tickets but only the Caravan Club have these still available.

Tickets are priced at Adults £10.95; seniors (60+ yrs) £9.00; child (5-15) £4.50, under 5yrs FOC.  The prices include a show guide worth £5 and parking £8.

If you want to take advantage of this offer then either ring 0844 581 3000 or visit www.boatandcaravan.co.uk and quote CLUB1 but you must do so before 22nd February.

My favourite chef James Martin will be demonstrating at the show on Thursday 25th.

You can see James’s motorhome here in a previous post.

Related posts:

1. Boat and Caravan Show Visit
2. The Western Motorhome Show

As my regular readers will know, I haven’t written a post for many months but I’m about to change that.

The reason for my lack of posts is a simple one and one that most of us fall foul of at some time or other; a change of lifestyle.

Not a dramatic change mind you; haven’t sold the Motorhome; didn’t move house; just changed my job!

It’s amazing what changing your job does for you, or undoes for you.  Your focus suddenly changes and things just get left behind but like a bad penny I’m back.  In order to protect my sanity though I’m going to take it steady and not try to write too many posts initially; work my way into it; gently does it; quality and not quantity.

I also thought that although this site is primarily about Motorhomes I might extend the remit and talk about other things that have a strong or sometimes tenuous link to Motorhoming.  Let’s see how it goes.

Hasten to say I am very pleased to be back because this site means such a lot to me and having built up a regular audience I realise it’s going to take some time to get you all back but I’m very determined.

It’s a perfect time to come back anyway because the main camping season is just about to kick off following the hard winter we’ve had so onwards and upwards.

Regards,

Steve

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Here’s some more good news about Motorhome daytime/overnight parking in the UK and this time it’s in Chester.

The Little Roodee is a Car / Coach Car Park located just inside the City Walls next to the Grosvenor Bridge and allows Motorhome parking during the day and overnight parking.

The Little Roodee Cafe has toilet facilities and information leaflets and you can pick up the open top tour bus from the car park.

You can walk into Chester town centre or take a riverside walk.  If you’ve never been to Chester then you’ll enjoy the visit because it’s a lovely old town with some beautiful buildings and it has a strong Roman heritage like York and they are very proud of this.  You can actually take a guided walk with a Roman Centurian and the open top bus tour will entice you with all the Historic snippets to wet your appetite for more.

Here is a great little site that will tell you all about what Chester has to offer.

This kind of facility certainly seems to be on the increase at last and whenever I see one I’ll put it on the site.  If you hear of any others please let me know.

Related posts:

1. Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site; Part 2

Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site has a great deal going for it including well laid out pitches, it’s only a 15 minute stroll into the centre of Cirencester and it’s adjacent to a country park.

The site is run to the clubs usual excellent standards but there were a couple of negative points I noticed when we were there a week ago.

• The first of which was that they only had one booking in point in reception so although there were two wardens on duty they could only book one person in at a time.

• The second was that although there are 217 pitches, and at this time of the year I would imagine these are full most of the time, I don’t consider the toilet amenities adequate for that number, especially when you consider the average number of people per pitch must be 3 at least.

This leads me on to a particular bugbear that I have with regard to the planning of toilet blocks by the Caravan Club.

Why is it that the Caravan Club insist on installing so many privacy cubicles at the expense of toilets and showers. One of the blocks at Cirencester Park has more privacy cubicles than toilets so whilst I had to queue for a toilet and then a shower the privacy cubicles were unused. Surely the Caravan Club needs to review it’s planning strategy and start equipping toilet blocks with what their customers want now and not what we may have wanted 30 years ago.  In any case, if you have a Motorhome or a Caravan then you have your own privacy cubicle anyway.  I also consider shared privacy cubicles as unhygenic and would never use one myself, let’s be honest and to the point, who knows what’s been washed in the basin prior to when you use it.

You also need to be careful with your choice of pitch at Cirencester Park if you like the sun because there is a lot of shade created by the trees in and around the site. Now obviously sun or shade can be a good thing depending on your requirements so you just need to be careful which pitch you choose so that you get what you want.

We also found the service road to the tennis courts, cricket club and the site had a lot of traffic and some of this was being driven way too fast, so you need to take care when walking on this road out of the site.

I do hope this post hasn’t come across as being negative in any way, it wasn’t meant to be I can assure you. I just thought I’d try to be a little constructive. Please let me know if you disagree or if you have similar views.

Related posts:

1. Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site; Part 2
2. Caravan Club vs Camping and Caravanning Club
3. Poolsbrook Caravan Club Site

Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site has one huge asset and that is the fact that it is in a superb position adjoining a country park and it’s only a 15 minute stroll into Cirencester town centre.

There are a number of extremely positive aspects to a few days at Cirencester Park and here is my list of what I think are the best, and by the way, these are not in any particular order.

The site itself is very well laid out and if you choose carefully you can find a great pitch in the sun and one that is on the periphery of the site so that you don’t feel overcrowded.

It’s only a 15 minute walk to the town centre where you can find loads of interesting shops, an indoor market and an outdoor farmers market on a saturday, plenty of restaurants, pubs, a great museum and a lovely church etc.  If you walk out of the site up the drive you came down and turn left at the top you then follow the path into the town centre, easy peasy.

Incidentaly, across the road from the site you can follow the signs to the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre, but leave that for a morning visit on the day you leave.

After turning left after about a hundred yards you will see a gate on the left and this will take you into Cirencester Park which is a fabulous country walk with lots of hidden things to see – if you can find them of course.

If however you ignore the gate and keep going you will see a very attractive  Leisure Centre on the right, across the road, one that we haven’t used but I’m sure is very nice.

Just to the left of this leisure Centre you will see Waitrose which we did use and is a very nice shop with lots of goodies although it is a little expensive but there is a Tesco in the town if you prefer.

However you have decided to carry on into the town so you come to a left bend and if you follow this you will find;

• The main entrance to the Cirencester Park, very nice, looks oldy worldy, country houses etc.

• The open air swimming pool – that is if you keep going around the bend – not literally – but you will see it signposted down an alley/walkway.

Ignore the top two for another day and walk across the road and take the first right after going around this bend and you will see the Museum.  It’s a great museum, a bit like the Tardis, more that it seems, and you’ll find out all about the Roman history of Cirencester plus lots of other tit bits.  Cirencester is proud of it’s Roman heritage and claims to be the largest Roman Town in the UK – funny that cos I always thought York was but then I’m a Yorkist so would have.

When you come out of the Museum, brain humming with as much information as you can take in in one day, turn left and you will come across a superb butcher in about 100 yards, here you can buy lots of cook in the oven or barbecue goodies, we’ve tried quite a few and they are gorgeous. Chicken with stuff, lamb with stuff, everything with stuff – lovely.

Once you’ve filled your backpack with all those goodies walk out of the butchers and turn left, walk to the top of the street and turn right, walk down here and turn left and you’ll see the church.

Please, please, please go into the church, you will not be disappointed.  Its very old, very interesting and very well worth an hour of your precious time.

Okay so now you want to eat your picnic lunch, well okay, walk into the church grounds and you can wander down to the river through the old grounds of a monastery.  There are various rocky signs of the old foundations.  So spend another hour of your day having a picnic by the river.

Then make your way back to the church and across the road you will see the indoor market.  This is a refurbished building and inside you will find many stalls with local crafts including one selling home made shopping bags that we found very attractive and indeed bought one.

When you’ve finished in the market head back outside, turn left and left again at the next street and a couple of hundred yards down on the left is a deli / cafe / restaurant that does some gorgeous food both to eat in and take away.

Now you can wander aimlessly looking in the shops and head back to the site for a rest and maybe a barbecue.

Related posts:

1. Cirencester Park Caravan Club Site; Part 1
2. Poolsbrook Caravan Club Site
3. Caravan Club vs Camping and Caravanning Club