New Experience Freedom membership!

So the Dynamic pricing and huge price rises hasn't worked so it's expand the Glamping and Yurt offerings and be inline with the other club....  I feel the club has seriously lost it's way....not for members anymore....and certainly not offering enough for Motorhomes who are short stayers in the main and often only want or need a stop over or service. Clearly there is a lot to learn from across the channel. Pretty sure this comment will be edited out so I am saving it to escalate across the internet. We have not booked one Club site since 2022 and only keep membership for CL sites now....they offer the same facilities on many as the club sites. 

Rowena, if CAMC offered a discount on the cottage rental prices, I’d probably still be a member but they don’t and the not very favourable Welcome Cottages T&Cs apply which is a double whammy.

I assume that if you are a retiring touring CMC member you may as well keep your existing membership as it seems to offer the same benefits? The Club are obviously trying to tap into the growing (?) Glamping market and expand that side of the Club? Having read TDA's posts about meeting up with friends who made use of Experience Freedom accommodation I thought I would take a look. To me what is on offer is still a bit too basic, I think I would prefer a proper fixed bed, in a separate bedroom. I certainly wouldn't dismiss the idea of making use of the Club offer in the future but I will probably wait to see how it develops.

David

I notice Lady Margaret is to be expanded and is to include a glamping village. There is a web page about 2024 developments but it is currently elluding me so I cannot provide a link. The Club seems to have buried it nicely somewhere, a search on developments brings up every year but 2024!

peedee

P.S. Google came up trumps even if the Clubs search pages didn't. You can read about it >here<. Nothing about Godrevy!

Thanks Peedee

Interesting reading about Lady Margaret's Park and provision for cabins with separate bedrooms which might answer my point raised above about a bit more luxury? Not sure I approve of wood burning stoves as I thought we were trying to clean the air rather than pollute it?

David

peedee, if you scroll right to the bottom of this page next to "booking terms" is "sitemap". Everything there including developments.

JK

Forgotten that one JK, you naturally start looking at the top menus.

peedee

P.S. very small print, I'll never see that on a tablet or phone.

I know two mums who live in terraced streets in London. They take two 11 year olds away when they can so that they can experience freedom.

You know the sort of thing - riding bikes on forest tracks, collecting fallen wood for fires or heating the outdoor hot tub, flying kites, looking for frogspawn,  chasing around, and so on.

Should I tell them that if they paid £63 (is that each?) they could take the kids to a sedate, well behaved Club site instead?, 

What does this Club know about freedom?

Our friends use them because they have very special and specific needs, and two nights not too far from home, utilising something that allows them to stay with family and friends who use their own outfits is all they can now enjoy. They have kept their existing Membership of Club, so have always got the discount, and news of the special offers.
If all you need is a sleeping base, and come from a “compromise and get the most out of things” background, then they are if you like static tourers. Similar size, similar ingenious squeezing of required essential bits of kit into a small space, but without the hooking up to anything. In the hierarchy of touring (I use the word loosely) they are at the apex of easy, don’t have to do much, don’t require much mobility or strength or effort to have a nice stay, so camp> caravan>service pitch>glamping pod. Most effort required is getting your luggage from car park to your pod. Our friends would be delighted if they could still do all the things we used to do, but they can’t. As it is, they can still stay with their family who caravan, with us, and get some real bargains.

As for adventure, they once drove across the Sahara desert in their LR, they were ex Off road British Champions, holidayed with a family Member in Ramallah who worked for the Palestinian Health Authority, dragged off an El Al flight for forgetting to take a tiny Swiss Army Knife out of a pocket, and long served in a Dales Mountain Rescue team. Cave diving (you have to have a screw loose😱) was relaxation. But ill health and old age takes no prisoners, and you compromise and keep going. 

The Club’s Experience Freedom provision is what it is. Nice, easy, no less or more adventurous to a certain extent then rolling up with your own outfit and using a pitch. Personally, like a lot of this kind of provision, we think they are expensive per night, and would prefer a cottage, but then all the Club’s provision might be considered on the expensive side. Wait for the special offers and they are in fact better value than a pitch. 

Early on in the club glamming experience there were a few incidents of groups booking them and using them as a party base, not understanding anything about MOST camp sites , not just CAMC, that there is quiet from 11 pm. Has that been dealt with, does anyone know, with appropriate booking requirements, t & c, and instructions to wardens.