Confirmation that campsites can open on 4 July has prompted a rush of bookings. For one award-winning eco holiday park in the Lake District, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing...
‘The phone started ringing even before he’d finished talking,” says Daniel Holder, referring to Tuesday’s announcement by Boris Johnson that campsites and hotels are allowed to reopen on 4 July. Four of the 12 people employed by Holder, managing director of The Quiet Site, an ultra-green holiday park in Ullswater, Cumbria, were poised to speak to people eager to book a stay at the site. At the same time, Holder was replying as fast as possible to a flood of emails. “We had 206 in the first hour.”
It doesn’t surprise me that people are so keen to visit. The Quiet Site is an exceptional place. In April it became the first holiday park in the country to win a Queen’s Award for Enterprise. And the campsite’s post-lockdown credentials are impeccable. With its Hobbit Holes, pods and generously-sized pitches spread out over the large site, social distancing should be easy. Its location on a rural hillside also means visitors are far from the pell-mell of urban life of any sort. And if the enforced isolation has left you starved of soul-easing views, you won’t even have to leave your tent to drink them in. I stayed there last autumn and even though my visit coincided with rather iffy weather, I still had a cracking time. Continue reading...
