A woman's best friend

TRAVELLING WITH DOGS is on the rise and has been for quite some time.

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Several studies and surveys have shown that, more often than not, dog owners prefer to travel with their pets. Earlier this year, a survey by the Barking Heads dog food brand even showed that nearly half of dog owners would sacrifice a trip abroad to book a staycation with their pet instead.

Pooch pitch

This dogged dedication to taking our pets on holiday is no different for campers, it seems. Pitchup.com has tracked the mentions of the word ‘dog’ in its campsite listing pages and since 2019, mentions of dog-friendly camping are up 83%.

Individual campsites are seeing the trend play out, too. Pre-pandemic, just short of half of the bookings at Riverside Caravan Park in North Yorkshire brought a four-legged friend along, while now the site is seeing 64% of campers arriving with their dogs. Having caravanned across the UK and Europe for the last two years, I can attest to the huge number of dogs on campsites – much to the dismay of my own pooch, who believes he owns whatever campsite we may pitch up on and is often disgruntled to see anybody else enjoying its facilities.

We didn’t get off to the greatest start on our dog-friendly caravan adventures. The first time I took my Manchester terrier camping in our little Eriba Pan Familia, he spent much of his time standing outside the doorway, looking in at me as if I had wronged him in the most unforgivable way.