Tuesday 20 July 2010

Newbiggin Farm Certificated Site, Waberthwaite, Cumbria


We'd wanted to visit Newbiggin Farm Certificated Site ever since they subscribed to AvailablePitch.com a couple of years ago, but time, other commitments and perceptions of how busy the Lake District can be, prevented this until Easter 2010.

Easter 2009 saw many campers cancelling sites at the last minute as snow and bad weather took hold. Now, we ALWAYS pre-book our desired sites well in advance for all Bank Holidays, as we know from running AvailablePitch.com, that sites, particularly the special or popular ones, get booked up months in advance. And if you want to get on a Caravan Club main site for these dates, you either book when online/telephone bookings open in January, or forget it.

Our criteria for the first camping trip of the year: A Certificated Location or a Certificated Site with hard stand (to stop our motorhome sinking to its axles), with hook-up (Easter can be VERY cold) and preferably loo and shower facilities. We also wanted go go somewhere we'd not been before. Newbiggin Farm fitted the criteria, and because we booked early with Colin Walker, we and our friends were in.

CLs and CSs take a maximum of 5 units (CS's can also accept tents), so you are never over-crowded or find yourself on a noisy site during a peak period, and this is a huge benefit at busy times of the year.

The forecast for Easter weekend was not good, indeed Colin told us he'd already had some cancellations as people feared 3 days of wind and rain. In the event, we had a mixture of weather, but not exactly as the weatherman had predicted.

The approach lane to Newbiggin Farm is a little narrow, and care is needed through the hamlet, however, as hardly any traffic uses this road, it is not a problem. We nearly pulled onto the rally field in error, because we spotted another motorhome already pitched up and lemming like, we followed. Just in time, Bill appeared from no-where on his pushbike and guided us the short way on to the camping area, on the left hand side.

Colin, his wife, father Bill and adorable sheepdog Bess run this working dairy farm. A few farmyard smells are to be expected, however the views from all pitches and the welcome from the incredibly friendly and genuine Walker family more than compensate. Warning: Don't stay on a farm campsite if you don't like "country type" smells...........

The camping field is about an acre, very slightly sloping, with the hard-stand area at the bottom of the site. As Colin observed after a night of heavy rain, maybe they'd have been better placing it slightly higher up! Never mind, it worked for us and our axles remained firmly above ground.

More about this lovely Certificated Site in the next blog ........


Image above: Uninterrupted views from Newbiggin Farm Certificated Site, April 2010.
Copyright AvailablePitch.com 2010




Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home