Despite the rain, snow and wild winds, the hardy British leisure seeker remains deeply in love with the caravanning and motorhoming holiday.
According to the UK’s National Caravan Council, there are a whopping 525,000 touring caravans in use in Britain, along with 174,000 motorhomes.
For a population of around 60 million, these are impressive figures.
However, when Scotsman Dr Gordon-Stables invented the world’s first ‘leisure-only’ caravan back in 1880, the freedom of movement it offered travellers was his inspiration.
It is ironic then that the march of ‘wheelless’ static caravans now threaten to stunt the growth of the UK’s ‘tourer’ caravan passion.
In much the same way as the construction of more and more cabins in Australian van parks has been putting a squeeze on the number of sites available for travelling grey nomads, so too have Britain’s static caravans been monopolising ‘camping areas’.
There are now a mind-boggling 327,000 statics – or caravan holiday homes – in the UK. In some coastal areas, village after village and town after town appear ‘colonised’ by the vans.
Jerry G has just returned to Australia after a three-week holiday to England.
“Driving along the Lincolnshire coast I was absolutely amazed by the staggering number of static caravans that basically dominated the landscape,” he said. “On the 30 kilometre drive from Mablethorpe to Skegness it was just one static van park after another.”
The rise of the statics has inevitably meant less space for tourers.
“Touring parks have slowly been decreasing with conversion to holiday parks for mostly holiday pitches,” Mike Hopper, the National Caravan Council’s Business Development Director told the GNT. “However, there are still more than 3,300 licensed holiday/ touring parks in the UK.”
Haven is one of the UK’s major holiday park operators. Of the 35 parks it has dotted all around the British coastline, just 23 of them have touring and campsite facilities.
One crumb of comfort for the British holidaymaker however is what Australians would consider to be the extreme affordability of the vacation.
Over the ‘peak’ Easter Holidays, a three-night family stay in a modern two-bedroom static with fully equipped kitchen and bathroom in a full-facility seaside park would cost just A$215.
And for tourer caravans, an extra large powered site measuring approximately 8.2m x 8.2m costs A$21.60 per night.
