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Sorry if anyone got the wrong idea from my post.  AWPs make a lot of sense and I'm impressed that Jasmine_Park has asked its' customers and potential customers their views - just how many major businesses do that???

OK, I have a two person pop-up - that means crawling/bum-shuffling around the tent and kneeling on pea gravel if you don't have several layers between you and it frankly doesn't make for comfort.  (Sorry, did a lot of work on Roman sites on digs and pea gravel is oftern found above tesselated pavements and it doesn't do a lot for your knees!

If you can do a lot of camping, then the additional expense for such layers would be worth it but, if like me, you can only get away for a couple of nights at a time maybe 9 max weekends a year, such additional protection (plus possibly rock pegs) is going to be an issue both in terms of outlay/recouping the expense, time (and because I am tied to ferries this can be a critical factor) and convenience as well as comfort. On the subject of comfort, I can imagine a deep layer of pea gravel might actually offer the restless sleeper on a sim a better night's sleep than unyielding grass, though not sure about the noise. when turning over !.

Primarily, campsites have to pay their way and if AWPs are the answer to keeping sites viable, then it will happen. What concerns me is that a site (not referring to the OP as their intentions stated on here) advertizes AWPs but does not say what type; charges a fee for groundsheet hire or for the AWP itself and if a tenter is faced with angular material and hasn't been told that when booking and refuses the pitch, loses all monies paid out.  

You don't have to leave pitches unoccupied in order to use a rotation system. Many of the campsites I have been on have a bare patch in the middle of the pitch where everyone is requested to erect their tent. Either side is usually a nice grassy area. So why not just work a system whereby the tents are erected to one side or the other giving the grass in the middle chance to recover. If this system was used regularly then there wouldn't be a bare patch. Even after a week grass isn't dead. It becomes yellow, but if left for a few days in daylight it recovers.

I agree that huge tents can cause problems especially if used for a week or more. However, you then make sure that the next few tents on those pitches are smaller giving the surrounding grass time to recover. Many campers only camp for a weekend anyway so the grass shouldn't really get that damaged if it was managed properly.

In my experience few campsites manage to fill every pitch every day of the year so it is really down the the wardens/owners to keep an eye on which pitches are being over-used and make sure they don't keep using the same pitches for the same type/size of unit over and over again.

With regards to campsite owners asking potential customers what they want. This is excellent practice but if every time someone comes up with a positive response it is accepted without question and a negative response is argued against then one tends to get the impression the decision has already been made.

Quote: Originally posted by katieb53 on 20/10/2011

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Tracey - What park was it that you have seen the astroturf on?

Just to clarify, we don't have astroturf which is what Jasmine Park asked!

KatieB

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Quote: Originally posted by Jakers on 14/10/2011

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Quote: Originally posted by sxis on 14/10/2011

we trialled some of this stuff ( it's very expensive for the area you need to cover!) and as the grass dies off you end up with a tent pitched on a 'plastic grid filled with mud' supremely uncomfortable under your sig and more likely to do damage that a rounded gravel - we dumped the idea and luckily had only invested in a little amount of stuff.

We have found our AWPs ( for no additional charge incidentially) to have become extremely popular and of course we can camp each of these type of pitches time and time again with only the need to 'refresh' between campers.  We did opt to keep a few grassed pitches for the sceptical camper and have had no reports of damage to groundsheets or otherwise on AWPs, they are of course extremely well draining a HUGE plus point for those of our regular campers allowing them a far more pleasant experience than camping on wet smelly mud.  We did have a complaint that the gravel 'walks into the tent' but then we balanced that with if the pitch was muddy that did/would most definitely walk in and be far more offensive than a bit of gravel that has to be swept out!

We have also had reports that it is actually warmer that camping on grass, not sure how that works but it was a seasoned camper who commended the 'under pitch heating' - he was thrilled through what was a miserable and cold summer!!!

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