Best Place To Find A Campsite

What is the best way to find a campsite? If you’re thinking about going camping and do a search online for campsites + location you will invariably be faced with a selection of search results for websites aimed at helping you to find a camping site. Given that there can be a vast array of campsites and holiday parks in the area where you are thinking of holidaying, campsite finder websites can be a helpful tool for choosing and booking a suitable site. So which is the best website to use when looking for a campsite? We decided to review some of the websites on offer and will post our findings over the next couple of weeks.

Review of Best Camping Site Websites

The websites that we chose to review are as follows:

• www.find-a-campsite.co.uk
• www.campingninja.com
• www.ukcampsitefinder.co.uk
• www.pitchup.com
• www.ukcampsite.co.uk

Also on our list was http://www.lovecamping.co.uk which looked pretty good, but it started redirecting to http://www.ourwedding.co.uk – a wedding planning website! Although it is back online again now, it has unfortunately missed the boat this time around.

Review Criteria

The criteria that we considered to be important and that were under consideration in these reviews are as follows:

• General appearance and usability
• Ease of search
• Number of campsites found
• Advanced search options
• Quality and information about each campsite
• Other useful information
• Amount of advertising

Before kicking off with the first review, I have a little gripe! Many of the websites that I looked at have advanced searches where you can select “Adults Only” as a search criteria. Yet when I selected “Adults Only” campsites the search results often showed campsites that accepted both families and accepted adults only. OK, so maybe you’re welcome to camp at the site even if you don’t have kids, or maybe the campsite is very large and has separate family and adults only areas, but generally speaking if you’re looking for a campsite that is adults only it should not welcome families. Gripe over.

http://www.find-a-campsite.co.uk

The first site to be reviewed in this series is http://www.find-a-campsite.co.uk. This particular website is a basic directory and hence the review is quite short.

Update (03/10/16) find-a-campsite has been relaunched and is now called campsites.co.uk. The new website features an attractive design with advanced search facilities and detailed information about the campsites. It is completely different from the one reviewed below.

The bright green background is quite garish, as are the adverts. Nevertheless the layout is clear and uncluttered. The main feature of the page home is map of the UK where you can choose a region. There is a list of the Top 20 Areas, including the Lake District, Snowdonia, South Downs etc. You can also select from a list of counties.

If you click on area on the map you are automatically zoomed in. You can then click on a county in that area. From here there is list of campsites, listed alphabetically by town. Also displayed is the postcode and telephone number. Some of the campsites have links to their own websites, which are available at £25 per year. Other than that there is not any information about the campsites or their facilities.

On the homepage they state that they have over 2200 campsites listed, and each county that I clicked on does have a substantial number of sites listed.

http://www.find-a-campsite.co.uk Summary

This website is very basic, using a simple directory listing. If you have a particular town in mind where you intend to stay and do not have any specific requirements or criteria that the campsite must fulfil, then find-a-campsite.co.uk is worth using.