Site prices.

Our main motorcycle club rally has now been held on a large commercial site in North Devon for the last four years, with the exception of last year when it was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Our social secretary was assured months ago that the price per person would be the same as in 2019, camping in a field beyond the hard-standings, £10 per person per night. So the club went ahead, published the details in the club magazine and sold about 100 tickets at £27 each. This is for two nights, £20 to the site and £7 for club costs, badges etc, and hopefully a little left over for club funds.
The site sent an email to our social secretary last week saying the price had now been increased to £15 per person per night, a whopping 50% hike.
That will be £30 to the site for a ticket that those attending have paid £27. A club loss of over £300 plus any expenses...

We can only vote with our feet and go elsewhere in future.
Al.

They’ll regret it when everyone is in Spain/France etc next year and your club has gone elsewhere.

Just looked for a site in Pembroke for a few days and found one for the 1st of September, £29 per night plus £14 per night for an awning. 

It is not surprising therefore, why we spend more time abroad, than in the UK. ..

Many sites in the West Country and elsewhere are hiking their prices this year to compensate for losses made during the pandemic. Much the same as hotels, restaurants and visitor attractions.  Its called 'supply and demand'! You can 'vote with your feet' for future years BUT my experience previously arranging club rallies is that once you stop using a site as a group, you will rarely get it back.  And you'll still have to pay inflated prices going solo.

Maybe, maybe not. We used to have our rally on a field owned by the local authority at Shaftesbury. Then one day they decided to make a quick buck and sold half the field to Tesco for a new superstore.
We went elsewhere.
For the last ten years Shaftesbury has been trying to entice us back. They're missing the 500 bikers who used to spend several hundred pounds each over the 3 days we occupied the town.
Al.

bikeralw wrote:Maybe, maybe not. We used to have our rally on a field owned by the local authority at Shaftesbury. Then one day they decided to make a quick buck and sold half the field to Tesco for a new superstore.
We went elsewhere.
For the last ten years Shaftesbury has been trying to entice us back. They're missing the 500 bikers who used to spend several hundred pounds each over the 3 days we occupied the town.
Al.

That's a lot of beer! 

Last year, 2020, after lock down, sites were brimming with campers. As one site owner put it, his losses were soon recouped by all the extra people that aren't able to travel abroad. So it's a falicy that they lost out.

Sites are very busy enjoying a boom time.
Supply and demand ? Another name to call it is Rip off the customer while we can !

We avoid expensive sites and manage quite well without hook up which also makes it cheaper.

If you want posh toilets and showers and 100 yards to the beach then your going to have to pay top whack!

I like the old farmer type with the attitude of having a spare bit of ground for a tenner a night !

For many years (until 2020!) we have enjoyed posh toilets, a hundred metres or less to the beach and full heated pool/spa type facilities in France with our ACSI membership for around the price of a CL/CS here. And better weather!  

Time will tell if those price levels continue next year onwards, of course, but fingers crossed.

We are just back from 3 weeks meandering around Wales and Scotland where and when we wished without spending a penny on any camp sites. (we use our on board cassette! ). What I mean is we drove around looking at the car parks with "Go away this town doesn't want your money" and moved on each day till we found a nice overnight place for free. For example we stayed at a heritage steam railway car park - 'can we stay in your car park overnight please?' -yes, you are very welcome, could you make a donation to the Air Ambulance collection box? - yes of course here's a fiver - thank you, we will leave the toilets open and the lights on for you. Also we parked right on beaches, next to Lochs in Scotland and in a forest. The only night we actually paid to stop was in Blackpool, a few hundred yards from the sea front in a dedicated motorhome car park at £11 for the night.
There's no need to pay to stay anywhere, it's entirely your choice if you want to, although filling your water tank is the most problematic obstacle.
One motorhome driver stopped next to me and I wound down my window and asked if he knew where I could get water and he said 'yes, at my house just down the road. Follow me. So I parked outside his house and with our two hoses we filled my tank. I of course thanked him profusely and he said 'no problem, you would do the same wouldn't you?' I said, yes of course but thank you all the same, it is very difficult to get water in this motorhome-hating country.

Much like the way we use our van that.
Like I've said before, keeping the water tank full is our limiting factor, but if you're cheeky enough, that can be got around. Did you know every church graveyard has an outside water tap somewhere behind the church.. I've never used one, but I know a lot who have..
Al.

Another thing that struck me regarding the 'theft-with-menaces' prices that camp sites charge (allegedly, I haven't bothered asking them).
We like going on steam railways. They always have a nice car park and as I said in my last post we do sometimes stop there.
Consider the cost of buying say 20 miles of railway line, three or four stations with toilet facilities, staff to run them and most of all the steam engines and carriages. Most of us won't know what this costs but we can imagine it to be a great deal of money. Far more, for example than buying a grass field, sticking a run of underground cable around and electric posts. Have a building for administration and taking money. This must be a tiny fraction of the cost of buying and running a steam railway. Yet typically one would pay £20 for a steam train ride, about the same as parking your motorhome on someone's grass overnight.
To me that highlights the rip-off scenario with the costs of UK camp sites up with which I will not put. And yet newcomers, especially, seem to think that it is compulsory to pay the Dick Turpin camp site owners.

bikeralw wrote:Much like the way we use our van that.
Like I've said before, keeping the water tank full is our limiting factor, but if you're cheeky enough, that can be got around. Did you know every church graveyard has an outside water tap somewhere behind the church.. I've never used one, but I know a lot who have..
Al.

Will fill the 5000 motorhomes circulating in Scotland. Holy Moly--Holy Water.   what more could the  "careful£ " M-homer need, space to park on level ground   too.               be with you.

While I don’t like wild camping in it’s truest sense, neither do I like being ‘ripped off’ by campsites.

But I have to be honest and say I (usually) get small sites with hard standing and EHU and facilities for around £10 per night, whether it’s on my own or with one of the girls.  I can often get on full club sites with hard standing, EHU and full on facilities for £13 per night for me, or about £20 for me and a friend.

I know it’s all about where and when, but that doesn’t seem too bad, especially as they reduce even more if I choose grass and/or no electric.

I know there have been several times when folk have suggested that going to a hotel might be more cost effective that paying high site fees, well........

Friends of our booked an overnight with breakfast at a decent Scottish hotel through a well known booking site. The cost was £350 (which they thought was ok) which included £50 to be spend in the hotel. That might have sounded like a reasonable bar tally until they found out that a 175ml glass of red wine was £22 and a martini £24.

Yes, I know there are cheaper places but bargain accommodation seems a thing of the past.

Cost £443 for two nights and meals at Wildings in Maidens to attend a funeral. Only about four miles from Culzean Castle campsite but we wanted to be close to family. No regrets on spend that time but we don't plan on other hotels anytime soon.

Speculating on a few weeks August/September at Beadnell Bay C&CC - around £750 - won't be doing that either.

Slaphead wrote:

bikeralw wrote:Maybe, maybe not. We used to have our rally on a field owned by the local authority at Shaftesbury. Then one day they decided to make a quick buck and sold half the field to Tesco for a new superstore.
We went elsewhere.
For the last ten years Shaftesbury has been trying to entice us back. They're missing the 500 bikers who used to spend several hundred pounds each over the 3 days we occupied the town.
Al.

That's a lot of beer! 

You haven't seen them drink!

In early January we are going on a 65 night cruise across to the Caribbean, down South America, to the Falklands, then round Cape Horn up the west coast, through the Panama canal and back for the princely sum of £46 per person per night. That includes eating from 6:30 am to 01:00 the next morning, west end quality entertainment, daytime activities and presentations from the likes of antartic explorers, and of course trips into all the ports on the way. That isn't on a 'used once' rubber dinghy from the Dover stores, it's on a P&O cruise ship.
Compare that with parking on someone's grass in the UK overnight in your campervan.