Certificated Location of the Year 2023 Winners
Your Certificated Location of the Year 2023 Winners!
🏆 Best Certificated Location in England - Cholsey Grange CL - Caravan Site
🏆 Best Certificated Location in Wales - Terfyn Mawr CL
🏆 Best Certificated Location in Scotland and Northern Ireland - Landis Farm Certificated Location
🏆 Most Unique Certificated Location - Abbotts View Alpacas
🏆 Certificated Location Sustainability Award - Big Sky Brisley
🏆 Best Newcomer Certificated Location - Betley Park Certificated Location
Hear from this year's winners 👇
Comments
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A huge 'Thank You' to all our visitors who voted for us. We are deeply honoured to receive an award.
The awards ceremony gave me the opportunity to meet some fellow owners from across the UK and was very well organised.
We look forward to meeting many returning visitors in 2024 and welcoming members to our farm. We will keep our 2023 price of £25 per pitch through 2024.
Today we have received many messages from members congratulating us, and we thank you one and all.
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Folks have different likes and dislikes😁 I am sure some of the CLs we love and treasure, others wouldn’t like at all.
I’d find it hard to vote for just the one anyway, as they are just so different. Last year, our best find was as basic as they come, a tiny little churchyard, hidden away, but with the most glorious of views, good firm grass, a tap, bin and CDP point. As much free fruit and veg as we wanted, from the harvest festival in the church. All proceeds from fees went to church upkeep. Lovely.
Well done to the winners.
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Perhaps getting in the winning list has a lot to do with some site owners canvassing customers to vote for them? 🤷🏻♂️
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And the number of votes cast for each candidate was….?
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I find it a little disappointing that some posters seem to be negative about the winners. Whilst its unlikely that I would make use of any of them simply because they don't match my requirement of being near things I can perfectly see that for many they would be the idea places to stay. I would have thought it was in all our interests to promote the use of CL's and if this competition helps all power to it. I am disappointed almost on a weekly basis about the results of my local football team but I don't blame the other teams that win
David
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I stand by my words. I’ve been on CLs where the owners push you to vote for them. I’m afraid tactics like that have the opposite effect with me.
WTG, yes I believe you can. Wasn’t there a post from Ro a while back urging members to vote for their favourite CL of the year?
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I don’t know how the winners come about. We stayed recently at one of the nominated sites, but not winners, and I got the impression that they made it onto a list as a result of members nominating them and then somehow the club selected the winners. The owner of the site I was on seemed very unclear of what criteria were used. Personally I think it all smoke and mirrors. I am not sure how you compare a site with hard standings, ehu, toilet and showers, serviced pitches to a site which is grass, albeit well drained, tap and toilet dump. Why is one better than the other?
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We’ve never been asked to vote, and have never been that interested in actually voting. Have absolutely no idea how things are decided,
We will thank a really good CL with an informative positive review. Like wise, if something isn’t quite right at a CL, we’ed rather either mention it in passing as part of a discussion with owners, or leave a mention in a helpful way on a review website.
We rejoined C&CC this year after many years away. Purely for the CS sites. Very pleasantly surprised just how good some of these have been. Not sure if they run a similar award scheme.
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You can see the full list of CL's in this years competition here, if your scroll down towards the bottom there is a list under "Here are the other CLs that were shortlisted in 2023:" listed by region, I think I counted 30 in all. I was even more surprised when I discovered we had actually stayed at one of them as we rarely use CL's!
Rowena posted this thread asking for member nominations some while ago. So it seems its entirely up to members to make nominations.
David
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David, I very much doubt that those listed were the only ones nominated, 30 out of roughly a total of 2200. The way I read it is that those were the ones nominated by the club to be included in the final list from which the winners were selected. Perhaps they were the ones in each region that reach a specific number of nominations, as I suspect there were many which had just a few or even only one vote from a member.
Like TW I feel that some site owners actively encourage visitors to nominate their sites for the awards.
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Nellie
I suppose if you are asking for member nominations you have to have some sort of cut off which from the list of nominated CL's is a list of 30? I would like to think that it is decided on a numerical bases by which I mean the the top 30 are those that got the most votes initially. I am not sure its completely surprising that some CL owners will be proactive in encouraging their visitors to vote in their favour? It won't do any CL any harm to have the accolade of being a winner in any of the categories? Being a very regular user of CL's is the competition something that you get involved with by nominating or voting?
David
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Have the CLs which won in 2022 gone rapidly downhill and fallen out of favour with members?
Or were they set aside during this year’s event so that a new list of different winners could be announced for 2023?0 -
There’s a list of previous winners going back to 2015, some of the names crop up on a regular basis.
I’ve just remembered that one of the CS sites we used this year had some winners plaques up in their washroom/shower complex……. Best Campsite Facilities winners 2016/17/18/19/20. COVID might have broken their winning streak.
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I don't use them but a few points from the above.
CL's are businesses, they want to make a profit (I assume) and being nominated and getting voted for and of course winning or being in the top whatever will lead to more business?
So personally I can't anything wrong with CL's asking their customers to vote for them, assuming this happens and the CL's know they have been nominated? I use Toby a lot and always the waitress or waiter gives a little slip with their name on it asking for an internet review and to mention their name when doing so. When one of my daughters worked there I found out a good named review would earn rewards and often a bonus if enough were done.
I usually do especially if there has been good friendly service.
So if a CL does asks for votes, I can't see what so bad about it, if the CL is good why not? Then again if you don't like the CL or the tactic then don't. As I said I don't use them so leave any objections to this practice to those that do.
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As one of the shortlisted CLs in this year's CLOY competition it's really sad to read the negative and cynical comments on this thread
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Every member of CAMC was invited to vote in the CL of the Year (CLOY) competition. It was advertised in the club magazine and within the club's social media channels. If you didn't spot that advertising that's not the fault of CAMC.- There were dozens of CLs which received at least one nomination and all of them were emailed by the club to inform them they'd been nominated.
- There was a threshold of number of votes which, when reached, automatically put a CL onto the shortlised list. Those CLs were highlighted with a roundel disc on their CAMC website listing.
- The winners for each category were those which received the highest number of votes.
No underhand tactics by anyone, it was purely down to member votes. If you didn't like the result but didn't vote for your favourite I'm not sure you should be complaining
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For the first time in 10 years we actively promoted the competition this year asking visitors to vote for their favourits CL site. It didn't matter to us if they voted for us or another CL site, just that they voted in order to show their support for the CL network. Obviously, we were delighted to receive any votes and even more delighted to find ourselves in the list of shortlisted sites. Many of our visitors weren't aware of the CLOY competition therefore our active promotion of it raised awareness amongst members.
As Cornersteady has quite rightly stated, there is nothing wrong with asking visitors to vote. It happens in all walks of life whether you're a charity seeking to win funds or a restaurant chain seeking more customers, it's a solid business tactic. It was your choice to vote or not if a CL asked you.
As a result of so many CL owners promoting CLOY this year member votes were up by 250% compared to previous years. That's good isn't it? It means more exposure for the CL network in general. By being shortlisted we have also been able to raise the profile of our CL site which has brought us additional bookings.
Every CL which runs as a business (as we do) needs to actively promote themselves to stay in business. Does it really matter if that promotion is by way of advertising on Facebook, here on Club Together or by asking for votes in a competition specifically for CL sites?
Richard and I congratulate all the worthy winners of the competition. They all do a wonderful job running their CL sites and welcoming CAMC members.
Skybarn Farm CL, Lincoln
(Adult only, fully serviced hard standings, free WiFi, a 2.5 mile private dog walk and perfectly positioned to explore everything historic Lincoln and beautiful Lincolnshire have to offer)7 -
Whilst I agree with most of Nicola's (Skybarn) post above, I don’t think anyone has suggested there were underhand tactics at play.
For my part, I merely reported my own experience of, what seemed to me, to be undue pushiness. No doubt that happens only in a minority of cases.
The whole concept of exempted 5 van sites, no matter which organisation certificates them, is something we and the site owners need to cherish to ensure the system continues.
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I'd just like to say that I've never been asked by any CL to vote or nominate them.
I'd like to put on record that if this happens that I am fully open to any bribe or inducement that the owner wishes to bestow on me.
Even willing to nominate more than one.
Well done the winners and all those nominated.
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It’s seldom we end up on an AO site, we don’t actively seek them out, but it’s not just CLs that consider AO or dog free status, it’s common across different providers away from both Clubs. Most have a very good reason, we know that in the case of some of the AO CLs we have used, they might have fishing ponds, or might be a working farm where there’s lots of farm movement around.
We did visit a CL where a group of children were allowed to run very unsupervised by their inebriated parents (staggering by 11.30am) and other visitors had property damaged. The owner had to sort things out, and move them off. He was most upset, came round for a cup of tea and a chat with us. He considered going AO, but we said it was just possibly an isolated incident. He was worried about his regular customers. As far as I know, it’s still children welcome. But that the simple factor that might put some owners off, having to trust parents to supervise their children at all times. Farms/fisheries can be dangerous places. Not sure if insurance is higher.0 -
Being a very regular user of CL's is the competition something that you get involved with by nominating or voting?
David, I did attempt to reply to your above question yesterday, but for some reason it was removed, so sorry for the delay in responding.
I do not get involved because of the excessive measures taken by a particular CL owner, which appear not to be an isolated case, as indicated by TW.
Hopefully this post will be allowed to remain!
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