Summer Holidays-Just how busy do campsites get?

[jennylambchop]

We have been bitten by the camping bug, and have enjoyed two outings already this year at increasingly more-distant campsites (as our confidence has grown!). To be frank, we are fair-weather campers, and tend to book 3/4 days in advance once the BBC Weather forecast is looking reasonably good and sunny. As we approach Summer Holiday season though I was wondering what people's experiences were, and whether the good campsites tend to get booked up a long time in advance, during peak time? I have compiled a shortlist of about 20-25 campsites in Dorset mainly, that we would like to go to, and am anticipating waiting until the forecast is good, and then ringing around for availability. (We are a family of 3 in a Vango Lomond 600 tent). Are we flattering ourselves, or is this a reasonable plan?

It's what we do now, I have come to the conclusion that we all have a much better holiday at a crap campsite with fantastic weather than at a fantastic campsite with crap weather.

You will always find somewhere with spaces as long as you are not super fussy, often though you will end up somewhere amazing.

Thanks Gobblers, I'm sure there are plenty of hard-corers out there, but personally I think fine weather makes it!

Three years ago we camped for 10 days at Clippesby Hall, it sheeted it down with rain, all day, every day, I shit you not.

We had booked it January, it was an amazing site with loads to do and do it should be as it was expensive, most miserable holiday ever

For several reasons I had to cancel my camping holidays in Loire Valley this year. I later kept checking the weather forecast for that area out of curiosity and it turned out we had much better weather in UK at that time. They seemed to have rain almost every other day and night and occasional thunderstorms.
Use different weather websites too. I like Weather Underground. Rather than give you a forecast saying 'it will rain between 3-6 pm' they will say you have 25% chance of rain at certain time of the day. If it shows 75% chance of rain I will stay at home if it's 25% I am inclined to go. They seem a bit more accurate than BBC too.