Visiting Edinburgh Pride Festival With Our Caravan
Some months ago, two of our friends expressed an interest to visit the annual Pride festival in Edinburgh. We had a quick root around some hotel options, and found that the cheapest room was in a lowly Premier Inn (rated just two stars on Google!) and it would be £250 per night - and we’d need two rooms! We almost called off going, but my husband remembered that we stayed on the Edinburgh CAMC site last year and we should try and book there. With enough advance warning, we found plenty of availability and even adding four adults into the mix, a three-night stay came in at just shy of £200 altogether.
So we trundled up to Scotland, some 200 miles from our home in West Yorkshire, with our little 1966 Sprite Musketeer caravan in tow. It was a little cosy with four adults, but with the addition of the awning, it was perfectly manageable. Edinburgh CAMC site has been recently redeveloped since our stay last year, with shiny new toilet blocks and a new fast-check-in gate. I confess that I still like to go into the reception area, have a little chat with the wardens and purchase a site plaque, so we didn’t use the fast-check-in facility - but the number plate recognition entry and exit system is a very welcome improvement.
We decided to get a taxi into the city from the campsite. The bus was £2 each per trip, the taxi was about £16 each way but got us into the city centre in about 15-20 minutes, which is marginally more time than the time it takes to walk to just the bus stop from the campsite.
I don’t really have much to add about Edinburgh that probably hasn’t been said before, other than its quite a sprawling city, so its best to have a bit of a plan of what you want to visit, rather than wander around aimlessly. We attended the Pride festival on Saturday, which was located all the way up on Bristo Square at the top end of town. As expected, it was really busy, but it was a free event with a main stage featuring various music and dance acts and a really fun party atmosphere.
Rather surprisingly, it came to a fairly abrupt end at 6pm, which isn’t something we’ve ever experienced before at an event like this. With such a vast city of bars and clubs, there was no obvious “after party”, so after another couple of hours we called it a day and headed back to the campsite.
We allowed ourselves all day Sunday to explore the touristy side of Edinburgh, this time taking the car into the city as none of us were particularly in the mood for a second day of drinking! We enjoyed the many small independent shops, had a great lunch out and stocked up on supplies for a barbecue on the way back to the campsite.
We just got a Cadac Carri Chef 40 with the portable power pack, as I flat-out refused to cut a hole in the side of our 59-year-old Sprite Musketeer for a gas BBQ point. But actually, it has been great to liberate the barbecue from being attached to the caravan. We can place it further away, so cooking smells don’t overwhelm the awning. So if you’ve got a Cadac, consider the portable gas power pack a worthy investment!
We finished the day with a little campfire on the beach whilst watching the sunset. Silverknowes Beach is just across the road from the campsite through the trees. Logic (and official guidance) says to walk along the main road by about 15 minutes to gain access to the beach front, but there’s actually a secret passage amongst the trees more or less opposite the site entrance - but be wary of the uneven steps!
It was funny to reflect on how much better the weekend had turned out because we took the caravan. In a hotel, we’d have been finding somewhere to eat three times per day (significantly adding to the cost of the trip) and would have been forced to retire to our respective rooms in the evening. Instead, we enjoyed staying up late together, cooking on the barbecue and a spending an evening on the beach, all of which ended up being our favourite activities for the weekend.
At a cost of £66.70 per night for four adults, it’s definitely the most I’ve ever paid for a campsite pitch. But when the alternative was for us to spend £1,500 between us, staying on the CAMC site was a pittance compared, and we not only enjoyed the top-notch facilities, but made some wonderful memories thanks to it allowing us to be closer to nature. And now our friends are sending me various links to listings of caravans for sale, so I think we have some caravanning converts!
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very interesting. Not stayed on the Edinburgh Site, but we do like Yellowcraig, which is not far away, close to North Berwick, which is a really lovely, interesting place. Easy to go into Edinburgh on the train, it’s about 20-30 minutes, and you are straight out onto Princes Street. Yellowcraig is really nice for a beach holiday👍
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