Service Pitches

Perhaps this is a good reason to introduce the taking of a 25% deposit on all site bookings as the CCC do and preferable make them non-refundable at that.

The present system is reminiscent of the German habit of placing booking towels on poolside sun-loungers. 

could you not have moved to a serviced pitch on 3/01 when they all became free? you would still have had two weeks benefit?

I would be happy with paying a non refundable deposit when booking. It firstly reduces people block booking to only cancel at a later date but also spreads the cost of your trip instead of having one big hit on arrival. 

I am not sure what take up the club would get on the 30% reserved for 2 weeks and 30% for 3 weeks. We tend to stop everywhere for a week, very rarely two and our perception is that we are a small minority. The only time we have stopped for the maximum, was when we were visiting my mum in hospital and we could not book that in advance. Where ever possible we book a service pitch and have never had a problem getting one if we book well in advance. True we have never tried to book a site over Christmas / New Year, these are very popular times at most sites. The only real way to try and ensure your requirement at these times is to book on frenzy day in December. Personally I would not like to see the club go down this route, it is what makes it different. Several commercials that we have used insist on filling whole weeks first, and will only let odd days nearer to the time, so there is always that option.

As a for instance, you can still get a service pitch at Grafham Water for any three weeks in July and August, as long as it's not the one that includes the BH weekend. For that you would probably have had to book in December.

in my experience, many commercials have far more serviced pitches (percentage wise) than CC....

the ones we regularly use have their own taps, or at the very least, a tap shared among two to four pitches.....

with the taps in such close proximity, you dont really need to have full 'serviced pitches' as, by default, theyre all serviced....

ok, it will then be the removal of grey water that becomes the issue on those pitches without drains, but certainly many MH waste tanks are pretty large these days and should last many days, while caravanners seem happy to use wastemasters, halving the amount of water moving duties.

I thought M/vans have large Fresh water tanks also ,so one move "in many days" can be a "multiple use move"

yes, we can stay put for many days...

my point was that many sites have taps but not drains, so fresh water can be topped up as and when, with grey being dumped only when necessary...

i would be bothering to stand at the mhsp filling with fresh water if there was a tap on the pitch...

yes, pull the grey dump lever and wait a minute or two, but unneccasy to do both operations at the SPoint and hog it when not needed...

If you look at booking for the Christmas period the service pitches (which are limited) always book up first. So the answer is to book up as early as possible. I see the OP booked in June for December but I expect many get booked up when the booking day opens or soon afterwards. It might also be possible that some had been on a long stay through Christmas and the New Year as the OP arrived on Dec 26th.

I wonder if the OP realised that the CC have two opening booking dates - I can't remember exactly when dates for the later part of January (well after 3rd is it? BB will know.) are released. But if they'd tried booking then they might well have found service pitches available for the latter part of their stay at least and possibly also available for earlier.

That's true, I'd forgotten that bit, I think they open Jan to March bookings late summer? I've managed to get to Baltic Wharf then!

edit I suppose if in doubt give the CC bookings dept a call.