Will this be another Staycation year?

Posted on January 25, 2012 by artj

Even though we run several holiday websites we don’t yet know whether the trend will follow that of 2011 and be another summer of financial misery leading to a whole host more of the so called “Staycation holiday” – holidays near home on the UK mainland. If this year follows the last then the companies operating caravan holidays in those parks which are littered all over the coastlines of our fair Isle will be rubbing their grubby little hands with glee.

Each to their own of course, but we prefer camping holidays in France or somewhere similar at a time of year when the area in which you are staying is not flooded with a mass of Brits and their ghastly kids. At the time we normally go to France the only Brit children in evidence are the very young who are a delight, but go in July and August and you see the other side of the coin – the dreaded British teenagers.

Strange but true, but having read a report in an esteemed daily paper recently it appears that these so called cheaper holidays at home in the UK are in fact more expensive than their counterparts in France!  What do you think to that when mobile home holidays here are dearer than the ones across the channel where at least you are more likely to get a tan for your money!

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Time to think about camping holidays again

Posted on January 24, 2012 by artj

Don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned it seems an extremely long time since I was warm! Being a person who hates winters and the cold it always seems to be an age before Springtime comes round again and we can get back in the garden, do all the odd jobs outside which need attention, and possibly start planning our camping holidays for the summer.

And just when you have started to believe that everything on this planet costs more and more every time you even think of buying it, I can tell you without fear or favour that such things as cheap camping holidays do exist after all.

Yes, camping costs no more than it used to in years gone by, especially when you take inflation into account, but you will find that it can cost you more when you go to the Eurozone because, as I write this article in late January 2012 we are only getting 1.18 Euros to the Pound. So we have a situation where the holiday itself is relatively inexpensive but the cost when you get there is considerably more than it used to be.

This can be a disaster if you are on a budget and have a family, but fear not and don’t despair because we have come up with some good ideas and some common sense ideas as to how you can save money on camping holidays. In fact, you can save a considerable amount by following our guidelines.

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Best time to buy Euros

Posted on January 23, 2012 by artj

Unless you’re a financial guru, or work for the Treasury, or you are a soothsayer of renown, then join the rest of us in being totally at sea and blissfully ignorant when it comes down to buying Euros for your holidays this summer. Yes, the £ Pound GBP has rallied against the € Euro, a little bit at any rate, but wouldn’t it be nice if it rose a tad more before our camping holidays this year?

It would be a boon to the camping holiday tour operators who must be having a moan about the near parity of the € and the £, and even though you can easily make savings on self drive camping holidays with some of our both innovative and common sense pointers, it is always nice to think that you got a bargain when you purchased your holiday foreign exchange and you won’t after all have to remortgage your house this year to afford some spenders. Yep, your kids can have that extra ice cream after all.

So really what we are all looking for is cheap camping holidays whether they be here in the UK – staycations – or in France, Italy, Spain or wherever, but if going abroad then you need to find out the best time to buy Euros and one way of doing that is to check in a newspaper every day.

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Are there such things as expensive camping holidays?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by artj

I wonder if there is such an animal as an expensive camping holiday, either here in the UK or somewhere over the channel in France, Italy or Spain? By camping holidays I do not just mean a couple of weeks under canvas as the term includes caravans, static caravans and mobile homes, which are really the same thing.  I ask because I was under the impression that all camping holidays were actually cheap camping holidays, so if you have another point of view then please let us know via the comment section at the bottom of the page.

OK, we have come across one or two companies who operate abroad and we think they are a tad dear – Canvas Holidays come under that heading for a start, and we have actually stayed with one company in the summer of 2010 where the mobile homes were a complete disgrace – Matthews Holidays please hold your hands up! I have to say that we have not been with them since and are unaware if those ancient mobiles are still in place or whether they have been replaced – as they should have been some 10 years ago.

Well there was no luxury from Matthews on that holiday in Quiberon in southwest Brittany, a resort which I would suggest you leave off your itinerary unless you like living slap bang next to a small but extremely active private airport which cranks up around brekky time and finishes when the last customer limps home for the night at around 9 pm.

As most of the campsites on Quiberon are gathered together at the far end (the rest of the peninsular is a complete dump!) then it is impossible to escape the noise. My advice is don’t go there because luxury camping holidays in conditions like that they are not!

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Purchased a caravan park with a commercial mortgage

Posted on January 9, 2012 by artj

Some time ago we spent a few days with friends who purchased their own caravan park some years ago, and to say they are doing well these days would be an understatement, and they are fully booked for most of the school summer holidays already, and we are only in early January now!

They were able to buy the land initially because of an inheritance and then they built toilet and shower blocks on afterwards, and then came a small bar cum function room just before they opened for the first season a very few years ago.

When you see people like them getting on it always seems that the good things in life happen to others, but my wife and I know that this couple have regularly put in 20 hour days for months at a time to prepare for the opening because they just couldn’t afford to pay staff to do things for them.

In fact Pam and I helped out for free some weekends to help out, and now they are showing a profit we are welcome to visit for free virtually any time of the year. What goes around, comes around I say!

So now they are planning to expand, and to do that they still need a cash injection which they have decided will be in the form of a commercial mortgage to buy more land next door which means it is far cheaper than a bank loan at the end of the term, and then it will be theirs, lock, stock and barrel.

The next phase is for campers only and our friends will be offering cheap camping holidays from June 2012 onwards.

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A caravan holiday in 2012?

Posted on January 7, 2012 by artj

What are you doing for a holiday this year? There is plenty of choice out there, from caravan holidays here at home in the UK, France and really most of Western Europe to camping holidays in the same places.

It’s a pity that so many people are being put off holidays abroad at the moment because there are plenty of bargains to be had if you look hard enough, and our bet is that there will be a great deal more before too long because we as a nation are still rather skittish about the state of the economy and the balance between the Pound and the Euro which, though gradually becoming a little more in our favour, is still bad at €1.18 to the Pound at the time of writing.

Well we can’t do anything about that, and neither can our politicians by the looks of things, so we have to grimace and bear it until things get better.

There are cheap holidays to be had as we have already mentioned, and cheap camping holidays are available both here and abroad, but if you want to go down that route and camp under canvas then France and southern Europe offer the best holidays by far.

Other than that, there are masses of holidays available at the right money in the home grown caravan parks which have sprung up over the years all around our coastlines from the north in Scotland to the southernmost parts of Cornwall. The scope for holidays in 2012 is enormous but we advise you to book asap if you want to grab a bargain!

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Vive la difference!

Posted on October 20, 2011 by artj

What is the difference between caravan parks in France and holiday parks in France? The answer is nothing – they are both the same, as are mobile home holidays, mobile home parks, campsites and static caravan parks or sites.

Vive la difference we say, but for all that it can be a tad confusing for the unwary or those who haven’t experienced the joys of mobile home holidays across the channel as yet.

Forget what the doom mongers write in the newspapers and the rubbish they spout on radio and TV because I can tell you from many years of experience that you CAN have a cheap camping holiday in France.

Yes, we know all about the value of our dear old pound which at the time of writing (Oct 2011) is worth a princely €1.11, and we are fully aware of the cost of fuel too, but if you are able to get away out of the high season of July & August then you really can have a bargain holiday!

Just think about this: When you are away from home for a couple of weeks, what is your major expense? For most people the answer is food, and if that’s the case in your case then you can lessen that bill by a massive amount if you just use your noddle!

The answer is to take as much food with you as can be packed into your vehicle. Non-perishable foods, packets, tins, cereals, in fact all the favourite you and your family love to eat which would be either mega expensive abroad or simply unavailable.

When you get to your resort it saves a fortune to “eat at home”, and by that we mean in or outside of your caravan. Get your drinks from the supermarkets over there instead of paying through the nose in a French bar at circa €6.50 per pint.

We will be sampling one of the south of France caravan parks next summer and we will certainly be taking as much in the way of edibles as possible.

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Caravan parks, holiday parks in France & Italy

Posted on October 18, 2011 by artj

Luckily for us all there are masses and masses of caravan parks in France, Italy and the rest of Europe as well, though in the main these go by other names such as campsites, mobile home sites or parks, and the ghastly word Parc has crept into some of the tour company’s blurb. I mean, what the hell is a Parc? The word doesn’t appear in the English language and yet some of the big name companies bandy it about as if were quite normal.

I suppose the same applies to their holidays in other European destinations, but my point is that they are blatantly devaluing the English language. Probably the first person to use the word Parc was unable to spell Park and so it stuck with other illiterates as they copied it for use by their own companies.

So we look for holidays now rather than parks, and we were looking only the other day to see what was involved in self drive holidays to Italy, and again the work Parcs was at the forefront of the search when we were really seeking holiday parks in Italy.

Anyway, we had a change of mind and are now actively seeing some sort of holiday in Brittany as the Brittany caravan parks seem to be just up our street.

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Are the UK parks cheaper than going to France?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by artj

There are caravan parks all over the country, or so it seems at any rate. Look on the Net and there must be hundreds of them dotted about following the coastline from the north east and around to the north west, and of course this is excellent news for anyone who is taking a Staycation, but are they good value for money compared to a vacation camping in France, for example?

Well the holiday parks here in the UK have one or two huge advantages and the first is that they don’t involve so much in the way of travel as there are so many of them there must be one well within driving range of where you live, or near to a train or bus station.

The second advantage is that the UK holiday parks give you “free” day and evening entertainment. It is termed as being free but in actual fact you pay for it as part of your holiday….did you think it really was free?

Apart from that and probably a game or two of Mini Golf then as far as we can determine you are charged for virtually everything else. Kids can swim in the pools but if they want to use any of the water based “toys” such as water walkers, aqua gliders etc then you pay extra. Tot all that lot up at the end of your time there and yo may wish you had gone camping in France after all!

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Camping in France or caravan park in the UK?

Posted on October 17, 2011 by artj

We normally go on a self drive holiday when we are camping in France or Italy these days because you can take pretty much of what you want with you in the car. Now the kids are grown and flown you have that much more room for all those little things which make life comfortable.

But the sad fact is these days that more and more people are taking what they call Staycations – stay at home holidays where they take a week or two on holiday in the UK.

Have you ever tried that? Well take my advice and stich with camping in France or somewhere lie it because I reckon that holidays in the UK are a massive rip off.

The so called caravan parks are ghastly in themselves and they still reek of the old Hi de Hi holidays with the Blue/Red/Yellow coats who try their hardest to inveigle you into “joining in” with whatever hideously puerile games they have thought up.

Thank the Lord that they haven’t started those caravan parks in France – yet! But the day will come my friends, when one or more of the larger tour operators copy’s the Pontins, Haven or Park-Resorts type of holiday which will spoil the whole concept of camping holidays in France.

The whole idea, or some of the idea of holidaying in France is to escape that sort of thing, and to date we are able to do so, but I have heard that deep down in the Languedoc-Roussillon these sorts of caravan parks are beginning to flourish.

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