Can no longer afford

We are using cl,s  up to a hour away, less travelling 

People also complain because CL prices are rising. See this thread-

https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/club-together/discussions/welcome-hobby-talk/caravan-motorhome-chat/cl-price-rises/

Incidentally, both posters above, you can select your own user name by visiting My Profile at the head of the page. It saves confusion as one 'ScreenName' looks very like another.

I suppose its inevitable that as inflation increases, we will all have to face difficult decisions as to how we go about our leisure time, but we do have some choices.

The CAMC isnt your only choice. Shop around a bit, and I'm sure you'll find better value for money elsewhere.

Keep it local. Even a 25 mile trip can seem like an age away

A couple of things that we've done lately include slowing down on the motorway to conserve fuel (i tend to have a heavy right foot!) and take advantage of the 'tow' effect behind a line of HGV's. (safely, of course)

I have also discovered Aldi and Lidl, and now do 80% of the weekly shop with them. I reckon I save £1000 a year.

If you need stuff for the caravan, buy second hand. I bought a 2nd Aquaroll for £15, and after a scrub up and a rinse out with cleaning powder, it looks brand new.

Whatever, I hope you find a way to continue caravanning  

We are feeling similar.

Last year, with the VAT reduction, we used a few Club sites, but far more CLs and CCC sites where we get the age reduction.   However we found we very rarely used the facilities block.

This year we have so far used only CLs , CCC sites, and private sites.......all much less expensive than Club sites for better (for us) facilities, such as serviced pitches.

We have excellent on board facilities, so really do not need a facilities block, especially if we have a serviced pitch.

Just back from a 5+ week tour and our most expensive site was £27 per night, fully serviced, with excellent facilities if we needed them.  Good play area for children too, info and good shop on site.

While on a site, we have considerably restricted what we do, visiting fewer places due to the cost of  fuel, and qspending more time than usual relaxing on site.

I have just commented on the ‘CL price rise’ page that we have almost stopped using Club sites now and just use a CL or the no facility sites.  We never use the shower/toilet block as we have our own so why pay for them?  Most CL offer much more value for money, for us anyway.   As for the diesel price it does add to the costs but we try to make economies elsewhere. 

Having never been away for more than three weeks on a single trip or considered that we go away particularly often it's not too noticeable that anything is less affordable than it was. 

So no, we're not feeling the pinch too much, prices have gone up but we're still able to get away comfortably although we rarely need or want sites with many facilities which will inevitably cost more.

We each have to live within our means and budget accordingly. 

The only thing to do is to get on with life as best we can. Cut back where necessary and adjust our lifestyles. Been there, done that. Leisure activity expenditure is clearly one of the non-essential areas of life where we can cut back and those who spend the most nights away have the biggest scope for making savings.

We had several years of only grabbing a few days holiday per year when times were hard. It’s life and there are ways of managing. 

We are at end of a 5 week trip, a short one for us, using mainly CLs plus one non-facility club site and one commercial site, and the average cost is a little over £17 per night, so much lower than we would have had to fork out if using full-blown club sites. This year so far we have had 134 nights away on our caravan at an average cost of £16:25 per night, so touring is possible with careful planning, without the cost being excessive,

I think, if you have a caravan or MH, it makes little sense to keep it if you do not use it regularly/for a reasonable number of nights  per year.   Just exactly how many nights is debatable.

Ours is now 14+ years old, we will hang on to it meantime as both we and DD+family are using it, but we will not be buying another caravan at our age.

We would very much like to be away more......maybe not at present while fuel is so expensive!........but we have agreed to help look after the grandchildren, which we very much enjoy, so our days away are fewer than before.  I reckon only about 13 weeks total this year.

One other way to keep costs down is to have a look at your centre (or any centre come to that ) for rallying.

If you are with the other club have a look at their Temp holiday sites.

Once you have got used to doing away with the orange hook up cable you will be able to benefit from much cheaper site fees.