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MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

July 2025

Practical Caravan

Many caravanners dream of running their own campsite - but what is it really like? Peter Baber finds out

There must come a moment in every caravanner’s life when, newly arrived on a perfect day on what appears to be a perfect campsite, they sit back and wonder, “Wouldn’t it be nice to do this forever?”

Come on, admit it: the idea of possibly running your own caravan park must have popped into your head, even for just a couple of seconds, when you're touring.

You might have dreamed about having your own patch of heaven, welcoming people onto it, getting paid to do so, and then seeing them all head home afterwards, knowing that you can stay there forever. Or almost forever.

Then I guess you might wake up from your pleasant reverie and realise some of the stumbling blocks reality puts in the way of this. There is the hard work involved - even if it is enjoyable (and I speak from experience here, because I worked for two summers on caravan parks in Germany and Switzerland in the 1980s, a job I still remember fondly). There’s all the red tape to tackle, too.

And probably most of all in Britain, there is the cost of land. Look up caravan parks for sale online, and you are unlikely to find one for less than £1m. Even the cost of a plot of land that would be large enough to build a suitable park probably wouldn’t be going for much less than that. Few of us have that kind of money lying around.

But there is an alternative option: you can become a site manager, running a site for someone else - usually, but not always, one of the two main caravanning clubs.

Northern heights

This is the route that Ed and Hilary Thorpe have taken. The couple, originally from Lancashire, are site managers at the Caravan and Motorhome Club (CAMC) Wharfedale site in the Yorkshire Dales.

They have been caravanning for over 35 years, always wanted to take it up full-time, and had planned to retire around the age they are now, in their early 60s. But Ed, who previously worked in textiles, was made redundant a few years ago.