Knaresborough - A New Approach?
Sorry if I appear to have unhealthy interest in Knaresborough site, but feel it worth drawing attention to the following found on the new web site under the expanded ‘View Details & Price Guide’ for this site. In the Bookings Section
‘It may be necessary to allocate pitches on site to be able to accommodate all visitors at busy time”.
Where did this come from? Never applied previously. Why now? What is behind it? Is it paranoia on my part? Perhaps a creeping insidious ‘officialdom’, of you will pitch where I tell you. Bit like the sudden introduction of the 1.00pm arrival time three to four years ago when nothing had changed except the Wardens at the time.
On the other hand it might be giving greater latitude and opportunity to the more liberal use of the dreaded ‘cone’ and ‘pitch reserved ‘signs for those amongst us are more equal than others and the reservation of special pitches; if you get my drift!
Who knows what the whys and wherefores are behind this, particularly when large sums are being spent on site improvement. Surely the time to address any pitch shortcomings. Or am I missing the obvious?
Bernard in Tring
Comments
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I thought this has always been the case on any sites where there might be pitches of restricted length. Is this not the case at K? When a site is operating at capacity, if there are pitches that will accommodate a large unit and they are taken by a small rig, this might leave pitches that a large unit, arriving later, would be unable to use.
It is a drawback of letting you choose your own pitch, which most of us like. It does not always work, at busy times, on all sites.
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On those sites which have a significant number of restricted size pitches this situation, in my experience, is well managed. The only draw back is that those with longer units will have little choice and often no choice at all as a pitch may be allocated for them. Those of us with standard sized units will still enjoy picking from the rest which are all available to us. This management has always existed in the decades I recall but it may be slightly more common and observable these days with the bigger units being produced and more being purchased
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Only been to Knaresborough twice, but I cannot remember there being a lot of shorter pitches.
I would think allocation for longer outfits would only be necessary when the site is very busy, as the note states.
If you are within any length limit given for a site, you can book and the Club then needs to ensure there is a suitable pitch for you when you arrive. The limit stated does not mean that all pitches can take that length of outfit.
Often a longer outfit can overhang the grass to the rear of a HS, but if pitches back onto hedging then this will restrict the number of suitable pitches.
I do not see the inclusion of this statement as the start of all pitches being allocated, just a sensible statement of the facts.
Under Club rules it can apply to any site. Better to state it on the site details than leave it hidden away somewhere that hardly anybody actually reads.
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Yes agree with KjellNN and micky.
It does say may be necessary to allocate. That doesn't mean it is actually happening each time. Also it does say at busy times. I think we will have to wait and see if anyone comes on here to say it is happening and how.
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Knaresborough CC site was fairly full when we were there. Even the grass pitches at the top field were busy. I never saw any cones, reserving pitches.
Perhaps during busy times the warden needs to allocate pitches so that best use can be made of the space available. -- On the other hand there might be another reason.
Cheers..................K
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We had an allocated pitch the second time as we had requested one near the disabled facilities. There were 2 with cones on them when we arrived and we were told we could have either of them, or could choose a totally different pitch if we preferred.
This was in November so the site was not full.
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I think that the issue of larger vans will gradually become a more prominent issue, due to the materials being used for manufacture being lighter and therefore single axle vans being longer. When we bought 5 years ago, one layout option was simply not an option for me as it was generally in twin axle design which was too heavy for my car. I have just ordered a new van in that same layout, and was intending to order the TA as it was within the weight limits of my car, and found after looking, that the same design was available in single axle which was only 46 cm shorter, which was mainly around storage and the fridge design. Being considerably cheaper I opted for the single axle but the van is 7.5 m long, so an additional 1/2 metre more than my existing. Speaking to other customers, many were also purchasing vans which were slightly longer; welcome as we were all getting what we wanted but in time may pressurise spacing on pitch size
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Possibly part of the answer might be to use the idea we saw at Kendal where one small area of the site is reserved for the longer outfits. The area was not obviously better or worse than the other pitches but presumably in normal circumstances helps make sure they can get the bigger outfits in with less difficulty.
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Another creeping tendency, I'm afraid.
At York Rowntree, they now cone off at least a dozen pitches, supposedly for longer units.
The previous wardens only ever coned off a couple of pitches at most, close to facilities - for less able campers I assume.
Now they say it is to enable longer units to fit on the pitch. But every pitch would fit a twin axle caravan. We saw many smaller caravans on coned off pitches and twin axles on non-coned pitches.
Bladon Chains is the same.
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