Affiliate sites
What's your experience of affiliate sites?
We are used to the high standards of club sites and expected to find affiliate sites to be on par.
How wrong could we be, have just stayed at the Ranch in Maybole, Scotland. No security, cars travelling at speed where dust goes everywhere, it must have been the cleaner's weekend off as the toilets were never cleaned, very dirty.
Chem waste point was a joke, would have to see to believe.
My advise avoid this one, I fail to see how this gets 5 stars on the member rating? If that's correct the club sits must get about 100 stars.
How does the club vet these sites in order to put them in their book, giving them a whole page? (229)
Moved from the Story Section
Comments
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We use North Ledaig, near Oban and Grantown on Spey. Both are affiliated sites and easily meet the Clubs usual standard for us. In fact in some ways they are better, albeit they can be a bit more expensive too.
- We've been to The Ranch and found it ok, although we've not been back. Toilets and showers were excellent and spotless, but I think they were brand new at the time.
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Affiliated sites are simply commercial sites which pay a substantial sum for this Club to advertise them. Those sites must think it money well spent if it increases the number of Club members visiting them. But the fact is they are simply commercial sites run in their own way - and they have reviews on Trip Advisor and UKCampsite.co.uk as well as on this one. On all those fronts The Ranch at Maypole comes out pretty well.
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We have used a few Affiliated sites over the years including a couple of Morris Leisure sites and Luckshall and they have been of a pretty good standard. They are a little bit different to Club sites but you would expect that. They often have static caravans as well as touring pitches. My understanding is that the Club add Affiliated sites to the the list as a means of filling gaps in the network. Those sites do pay for the privilege but then they have access to 350000 possible customers. Perhaps you meant to leave a review?
David
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My experience, although I’ve never used The Ranch, is that having stayed at North Ledaig, Grantown and Huntly Castle, as well as Carnon Downs when it was an AS, is that each site was fine, although different from club sites, and we had no complaints with any of them. In fact we managed a few days at North Ledaig almost every year since the early 90s so they must do something right.
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Agree. North Ledaig is a lovely Site. We actually joined the CC there, back in 1985. And we have been back a few times. We love the Racecourse AF Sites as well, use Exeter regularly, have also used a few more no longer on the network such as Wincanton, Fakenham, Market Rasen, Hexham. Some have gone for good, others have gone it alone. For us, we actually like the bit of difference away from the usual Club set up. All have had decent, clean facilities where provided, but it’s the locations that attracted us.
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Sites that wish to be Affiliated have to pay a considerable sum of money for the privelage
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Read all about it -
https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/uk-holidays/uk-sites/affiliated-sites/becoming-an-affiliated-site/
I missed Wood Farm off my list of AS's we've used. They had the best MHSP I've ever seen.
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I have found many affiliated sites to be much better than club sites, with bigger pitches, fewer pitches for a given area, more open spaces on the site and better facilities.
There is a whole world of very good sites with much better facilities than club sites out there. Just sticking with club sites certainly limits one experiences!
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It’s good to mix up Sites, there are Club Sites we love, and others we wouldn’t go back to in a hurry. We have been on a lot of small private Sites as well, some very nice ones.
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It all depends what floats your boat. I have used a mixture of both clubs sites, affiliated sites and C&CC equivalent. Independent sites and CLs. In general I would chose cmc sites. However my choice is dependant on what is available on my tour routes and there are a couple of sites that I will not return to but mainly for their exit or entry.
For me the most important aspect has been location.
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We used Stanmore Hall some 9 years ago. I don’t remember the pitch or facilities being significantly different from most CC sites. The grounds were exceptional though. More recently we used the ML site at Betws y Coed and thought that inferior, particularly in the ratio of facilities. We have stayed at Grantown on Spey four times and I would rate that as above average.
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We used Carnon Downs in Cornwall before the club took over, the main reason being that it stayed open all year and it's handy for both coasts. It was always a well run spacious site so we were happy to use it and also get a slight reduction on fees as part of the affiliated offer.
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We have used a few AS sites over the years and always found them good maybe different from regular club sites but still ok. With regard to The Ranch I think you maybe just caught them on a bad weekend because it is one of our regular weekend sites being only 45 mins from home and we find it a great site we have been using it for 16 years now and know the owners well they are very good and strive to keep a good site the pitches are fully serviced and we have never saw the toilet block dirty. I would give it another go it is a site I would recommend to anyone. Also there fees are very competitive. Especially compared to regular club sites
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