I can’t help notice the same names popping up in the broadsheets when it comes to camping. It made me start to think about putting a who’s who of camping in the UK. At the top of the list, it would have to be Cool Camping’s head honcho’s Jonathan Knight, who seems to have written for most of the broadsheets at some point and has recently contributed to The Independent’s Top 50 campsites and The Guardian’s 100 Best Sites (The 10 best active campsites), as well as The Telegraph’s 10 best traditional and 10 best luxury campsites.
In fact, I can’t help wondering how different the Guardian’s 100 Best Sites guide is from the Cool Camping one. It’s just that Cool Camping’s Sophie Dawson also seems to have contributed to it (10 best campsites for views) as did Guardian contributor Dixe Wills (The 10 best secluded campsites), who is also author of Cool Camping’s Tiny Campsites. Other authors of Cool Camping books like Keith Didcock (Best seaside campsites in Europe Guardian 2009), Sam Pow (Britain’s 10 best alternative festivals Guardian 2009), Clover Stroud et al also get featured in the broadsheets, but mostly when their books were being plugged so not sure they’d should be included in the current list. Perhaps this is why all the campsite guides in the broadsheets, don’t contain many surprises.
Other notables would include Matthew de Abaitua of Cathandmathgocamping.com blog who contributed to an earlier Guardian Camping Guide and more recently has been promoting his The Art of Camping book in The Guardian and The Telegraph. We’ll probably be reading more from Matthew when his alleged how to set up a campsite guide comes out. There also Garri Rayner of goglamping.net who also contributed to the recent Guardian guide (The 10 best quirky campsites and The 10 best campsites for luxury).
Think I’d have to include Guardian contributor Dave Hall simply because he’s credited as author of The Guardian’s Guide to Camping (2011), and penned its The 10 best campsites for wildlife and Kit corner. Dale Berning probably just about gets on the list even though he was formerly writing about arts but has recently jumped on the camping bandwagon with pieces such as Luxury vs Economy (glamping versus camping), Quirky campsites: mobile home delivery, The 10 best campsites for culture, The 10 best campsites for luxury and The 10 best quirky campsites. Less sure about Joanne O’Connor (The 10 best waterside campsites), Joanna Moorhead (The 10 best family campsites) and Bibi van der Zee (The 10 best campsites for food lovers) because although they contributed to Guardian Camping Guide they write more broadly and have other specialisms.
If the recent The Independent’s Top 50 campsites is anything to go by you’d have to inlcude former journo Juliette Dyke of www.freshairfix.com, Rhian Evans of www.campingninja.com, Dan Yates of www.pitchup.com and Tess Carr of www.thehappycampers.co.uk. That said I’m less sure about Pitchup because it just seems to be a merge of several other campsite databases and is more about quantity than quality. At the same time, Tess’s The Happy Camper’s book book is a few years old now and her site doesn’t look that active.
Anyway, the above are just a quick list of who’s been appearing in print which is just a snapshot of the industry. There’s a lot of others worthy of being included and who knows maybe I’ll get around to putting a definitive list together.
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The selection we have in our new on-line guide has been put together after 35 years experience of selling camping holidays to France with the focus on what the public wants. Hope you enjoy viewing it. We are adding more and aim to have 200-250 by the end of next year.
[...] campsite that was missing from this year’s round ups of best and top sites (see Who’s Who in Camping 2011) was the one at Stoneywish Nature Reserve. Seen simply as a campsite then it’s probably not [...]