Campsite must haves???

[Iwannalivebythesea]

my dh has dreamt forever of owning a campsite and now finally we are in the position to move forward and actually maybe do it!! its all very exciting and will be a drastic change of living for us if it happens.
But I was just looking for some general opinions/advice about what would be your campsite must haves. We would be a family run campsite aimed at families.... what would you want or need in a campsite??? Pool? Kids club? Bar/resturant etc etc??

A million thank yous in advance for any help!!

but haven't you ever tent camped with a caravanner?

No pool

Kids club & restaurant put me off as do caravans.

I look for:

Quiet, family friendly site
Free HOT, clean showers
Clean loos ( with toilet paper!)
Decent washing up facility
No noise after 10.30 rule

A dog-free area

Maybe play area, some open space for ball games/ kite flying etc

Perhaps little shop selling essentials, fresh eggs etc

Campfires are good too. Also, some places do bacon sarnies in the morning or have a pizza oven etc which is lovely..

I've just got back from camping in Edale. Not having car access to the tent fields was a bit of a pain when unloading and loading the car but not as bad as I'd expected. Although the excellent weather did help! But generally it was great to be able to walk around the site without worrying about cars manouvering so on balance think it's a good thing. Love the idea of wheelbarrows, that sounds like a brill idea.
I also liked that the site wasn't too crowded and you could pitch wherever you wanted.

I would say that my main 'must haves' for a campsite have already been covered, clean facilities and free hot water. I would add though that somewhere to store your clothes when you're showering would be a nice touch, a decent sized shelf or something. It's so frustrating to try and keep everything dry. I would quite like a separate drying and dressing area so the showers aren't tied up so long while people get dressed. A bit like a gym changing room if you know what I mean. I'm not sure if that would be to everyone's taste though.

Hope it goes well for you.

If people took toweling robes to the shower instead of trying to get dressed and undressed it would make life easier for everyone.

Why have an area to get undressed, then get itno the shower, then go back to the other area to get re dressed? when you can have a toweling robe and walk to the shower - take it off, shower, dry pop on robe and go back to tent and get dressed.

For me, because I try to bring as little clothes as possible and a robe is an extra, because I can't stand up in my tent so getting dressed in there is a nightmare and last summer I would have got soaked on the walk to and from the shower block in just a robe as it was chucking it down most of the week!

Remembered something else I wanted to suggest, a drying room for boots, waterproofs etc. Although I'm thinking from a hiker perspective, depends very much on where the campsite is if that would get used very much.

ah does anyone take dressign gowns on holiday?

alhough i did last time, it was one of these in a long which is great for wearing in aition to pyjamas in a cold van.

i have very happy memories of Edale, because I was a childless 20-something the whole 'carrying stuff from the car' thing was easy. carrying all my crap & tent & transporting 2 kids alongside...less like fun. Still it was a great site but i wouldn't go there now uless i had a pre-pitched tent to arrive at.

I'm less keen on curfews because it cuts both ways..i like to be able to stay up and quietly enjoy ourselves without worrying we are breaking a rule. Being woken at 3 am by some tool in an Escort wanting to play 'Dance 2008' at full volume then turn it down to less than earsplitting volume in order to shout out for their dog who has escaped them in the dark (no doubt to find some P&Q) ...less charming. (i am looking in your direction Park Farm)

some sites just seem to attract the right clientele to get by without too many set rules. Others..not.

yes, cos there is never enough room to put your clothes in the shower and only one hook and never a load of hooks or a couple of shelves and a couple of hooks, then you try and get jeans on in a wet shower without getting them wet, and there is no where to sit down to put on your socks and you knickers fall on the fall for the umteth time and you have wet knickers - so it seems the sensible thing to do pack a cotton or tweling robe and wera to the shower making life greatly easier for the sake of packing one item.

i just hate wet knickers to much

I would second the person who mentioned a baby bath in the shower block. This makes camping with babies and toddlers (terrified of showers) so much easier. North Morte farm in North Devon is a great campsite if you are looking for inspiration.

I understand where you're coming from Ivy but I'm afraid I don't quite have the savoire faire to walk through a campsite in a robe. I even take black tracksuit bottoms as PJ's as I don't like people thinking I'm not dressed when I'm walking through the site. Strange, I know

Edgar, my DC's are old enough to do the carrying to and from the car too so it wasn't totally tedious! They did whinge a bit though. I was really impressed by the site, will prob go back at some point.

Another vote for the issue of not charging silly extra prices for additional tents for kids - we avoided one site which wanted to charge us for 3 pitches and found another that had marked out bays and were willing to let us see if we could fit ourselves into the space - which we did easily.
Another thing - I found camping with DD when tiny was a real pain, the facilities for small babies are generally very poor.
My fave campsite so far is one at Gairloch in the Highlands - lots of space, walking distance to the beach, lots of showers and no charges for using, good (if slightly eccentric) facilities for babies (a big sink!), great shop and a visiting chippie van on some days made an occasional break from cooking. Good enough to make me overlook the midges and the tick I had to get off my child!

If you don't have a caravan or a tent, what are you actually doing on a campsite?

Bivouacing?

*Clean, warm, free, shower blocks.
*Clean, warm, toilets, with radio being piped in to disguise the sounds of others!
*Leave cleaning things easily accessible. I hate going into a dirty shower/toilet, but it's even worse is if I'm not able to clean up my own mess.
*No dogs, or a very separate area for those with dogs. DH and DD really don't like them so a campsite where they're allowed is a bit too stressful.
*Lockers for hire with plugs in so you can charge up cameras, etc.
*Washers and dryers.
*Campfires allowed.
*Shop selling local basics.
*Big space for kids to run around in. Maybe a playground, but make sure there's benches for tired parents to sit on, or put it within view of tents.
*Don't cram everyone in, and if you're having caravans keep them away from tents.
*No club house, bar, etc, however my favourite campsite has a small play room, with mini pool table, loads of books and local information, duplo and a comfy settee. I escaped there every morning with DD my book and blanket enabling DH and the rest of the campsite to sleep beyond daybreak. :)
*Plenty of useful information. Things to do in wet weather, good local cafes, market days, good beaches etc.
*Also campsite info, like a map of where everything is. If the washer and tumble dryer take tokens how many tokens are you likely to need to get a full load dry?
*A print out in a predominant place of the next few days weather forecast.

I've basically just described my favourite campsite, plus a few extras that would make it even better... Now I just need to find one that lives up to that and is less than 300 miles away from me. :o

ooh.Gairloch. yes, lovely area.

one option is taking over a camping and caravanning club franchise...

Bilblio- where is that site?

Wow, this is an insight into how different camping is is different parts of the world. For me a campsite is a small clearing with no one else anywhere nearby. No water, no toilets, no showers etc etc
If I were to stay at a communal campsite, though, I would hope to find each site with a well made campfire grate, plenty of space and trees/undergrowth between sites to provide lots of privacy, plenty of land around the entire site to make it feel "away from it all" Simple, eco-firendly loos and showers. A really stunning location to make it worth sharing.

What about a few farm animals for the kids to play with? Chickens so you could sell fresh eggs?

Something I would love is plenty of drying space in each shower cubicle also well sheltered from the shower itself so I dont have to wade out.

Clean, clean, clean. My favourite campsite was in the South of France where the loos and showers were cleaned constantly by an army of elderly women dressed in black. I dont know who supplies these elderly ladies but I'm sure they must be available from somewhere.

I do like a shop with fresh bread and milk for breakfast. Chilled wine and beer (not for breakfast). The shop should be reliable and well stocked.

We normally camp in France so love pizzas cooked in a wood burning stove and buy chips to go with whatever we have cooked for ourselves.

Have an excellent website then keep it updated. Lots of photos and lots of information and online booking.

Good luck!

I think the main thing is that the facilities must be clean. In France there are those squeegy things so that you can clean the shower after yourself. It's a great idea and works. I hate it when there is nothing to use to clean up after myself.

Underfloor heating in the shower block is great. At the campsite I'm thinking of it had underfloor heating and a code to get in and out of the shower/toilet block. the door handle was quite high up and young DC were asked not to go in on their own. This meant the facilities were kept very clean.

I love Slubber's idea of two draining boards at the washing-up sinks. I've always thought that, too. Make sure you have enough sinks for the number of pitches.

Please don't keep caravans and tents separately. We are all people and it would mean that my three DBs and I couldn't take our families camping together, as two have tents, we have an FC and one DB has a caravan. We are camping together in July. Also, we are camping together with a big group of 8 families in June and we cuoldn't do that if tents and caravans were kept apart.

Leave a big space in the middle of the field for people to play games. Last year the big group that we go with played rounders and other people we didn't know camping on the same site joined in. We were pleased.

Please don't overcrowd the site on a Bank Holiday. We have a couple of favourite sites near us, but one of them really crams them in on a Bank Holiday (into the play space in the middle of the field).

A bit of recycling is good. Different bins for different materials. On one site the bins are in an area surrounded by trees/hedges. It's a really good idea.

Small shop/cafe on site, but no club house, please.

I think that's about it.

Also, but it's difficult to deal with, don't make people go inside their units on the stroke of 10.30 pm. I think if the units are far enough apart a murmur of voices after that time is perfectly acceptable. Obviously no music or anything like that.

About the no caravans thing. tbh if folk really want to make a living from running a site then you have to accept caravans as their camping season is so much longer, or for some hardy tin tenters can be all year round.

I love Eskdale in the Lake District as it is tents only, and the site had a very different feel to it because of that, but the people running it must have some other source of income for 6 months of the year.

What does grate a little is when it is very obvious that there is a heirachy of pitches. With 'serviced deluxe' van pitches at the top (still have no idea what a serviced pitch it - does someone come and hoover the gravel?) which tend to have the best views or are closest to the shop and then right right back in the armpit of the site (on some serious slope or next to the midge fest swamp) is the field for the non ehu tents. i can see the financial reasons behind it but always feel a bit, I dunno, like a peasant as the young man on the quad bike gesticulates casually that there is your lowly bit of grass over there.

Family shower rooms are great as it means that dh sometimes has to do the shower duties with the dds and it's not always me. Plus in days gone by is VERY handy to have one adult getting wet and doing the washing and the other adult on the recieving line doing drying and putting clothes on.

aww Slubber, I can't bear to think of you feeling like a second class citizen - we're all campers together !

Are you still going on your monster trip in the summer?

even caravanners get treated as 2nd class citizens on largely static sites...

one i wen to had us pitced on ground so wet our unit had an inch of water under it (not great for those sleeping outside), and so tightly packed on Easter weekend that our awning was cross-pegged with someone elses!

though there is also logic in hierarchy - you will never have to get a tractor to tow a tent out of a mire.

clean loos and showers definitely a must - agree that the more hooks the better!
A shop - I won't go to a site which hasn't got one! doesn't have to be large and the more random the better as I can then send ds's on a regular basis to buy stuff.
Parking by the tent is handy but not essential
Nice friendly owners!
Space or a playground - probably space more important for us now as ds's are 9 and 7 and just want to kick a ball around from dawn to dusk

I have camped in 2 sites where there were caravans and tents. One was Boscreage near Praa Sands in cornwall, we were in a static caravan, this was a lovely site though no fires allowed. There was a separate field for tents and this worked really well. BIL and family camped whilst we were in the SC.

The other place was Higher Harlyn as already mentioned, this didn;t work well the caravans and tents were all mixed, maybe it was the particular caravaners that were next to us but they were awful, horrible people, so maybe my judgement has been clouded by them!