what do we pay our subs for?
Lapsing into the language often seen in the caravan club newsletters, I am prompted to write by a disgraceful episode at a disgraceful CL site that claims to be caravan club registered.
Looking for a quick overnight stopover somewhere in the northeast near my son and his partner, I looked at the cc website…. This was not without difficulty as for reasons best known to the jobsworths in the IT department, a second named member (after first demanding that I create an account of my own) is not allowed access to the list of sites! So, after changing computers, and logging on as my wife, I eventually located a CL called ‘Crowtrees Ground’. As this was in the right sort of area, I rang to book. Membership details were not required, neither was contact number or address. This didn’t bother me at the time, as many CLs have a refreshingly casual approach to bureaucracy. A cheerful voice on the phone assured me that it would be ok if I just turned up.
I won’t go into details as to why, but I had to collect my wife from North Shields so was likely to arrive late. This I was assured would be OK also.
After an horrendous drive up the A19 in our wall-to-wall British summer rainstorm, after navigating the early evening rush in Newcastle, littered as it was with broken down vehicles, we arrived at a rugby ground labelled Crowtrees. All signs assured us we were at the right place, but there was an absence of a CC sign. I then started looking for someone to check in with… No-one in reception or either bar knew anything about a caravan site let alone my ‘booking’.
After an interminable wait watched by the incoming drinkers (who treated loitering strangers with varying degrees of mistrust) for someone to come back with any information, like Elvis, I left the building.
Having paid my subs to CC like everyone else, and having been treated with contempt by various larger site wardens apparently for either having a Motorhome not a caravan or not parking quite neatly enough, and open friendliness by most if not all small site owners, I was not prepared to leave it quite there, so wife and I went to explore the whole ugly rugby ground complex to see if we could see anything which resembled a caravan site. After 10 minutes of pot holes and puddles we gave up. We tried ringing the registered number again, with no success, - it seemed that whoever had taken my ‘booking’ had decided that they had had their laugh at my expense and gone home.
On the CC website it is described as a quiet waterside site, not full of noisy nocturnal revellers and some distance from the river. I wasn’t expecting much; - just for something to be there.
This is not quite where it ends, for now self and wife were without anywhere for the night, and it was well past dark and still monsoon conditions. We pushed on, and found a non CC site further up the road who were good enough to cheerfully allow us one nights stopover without booking, so, somewhat late and exhausted, we eventually turned in.
In the morning, the rain had stopped, and the site warden asked where we had been booked into… ‘OH them ..I just don’t know how they get away with it… they ought to be reported..’
I have no idea if there is a designated site and I simply failed to find it in the dark and the rain, or if we were just supposed to park at the far end of the rugby club car park… BUT what we found was so far away from its description as to be serious misrepresentation. Surely CC has to take responsibility for not vetting carefully enough, - after all, accurate site location and description is a large portion of the service that we pay so dearly for year after year.
Wanda's Driver.
