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never heard of being charged extra for a twin axle,sounds like a rip-off and greedy site if you ask me.I just wouldn't go back there,there are plenty of other sites glad of your business.Are you not a member of the caravan club?They are straight and fair with there pricing structure.We did have to change our storage has they did not allow twin axles,but we knew that all allong anyway so that's fair enough.It is always best to let the site know the size of your caravan when you book anyway,I would consider this more important than the number of axles your van has.What is the name of this RIP-OFF site anyway???

At the end of the day it all comes down to money.

Money that we are charged against money that the site owners are paying out.

I am sure that some costs are not charged directly but covered by other charges, however where a particular type of vehicle or unit is causing problems and the money to repair those problems cannot be covered by other charges, then site owners, in my view, are entitled to make extra charges for those types of units, or ban them altogether.

We have already seen this happen with other parts of camping/caravanning that we take for granted. Children, tents, dogs, motorhomes, caravans, statics, all things I expect to see on every site and yet often one or two of them banned by the whim of the site owner.

So I am not in the slightest surprised to read that some sites are now banning twin axles, or at least, charging them extra.
Whether this cost or ban is justified will have to be answered by those site owners who are imposing the ban and it would be intersting if some of them were written to and their answers published here.

Even greedy site owners are not going to cut off their noses to spite their faces and if they are charging extra for something like twin axle vans, then they have a reason for doing so. Until we know what that reason is, then sl*gging them off here is a wasted effort.

Quote: Originally posted by LobeyDosser on 16/12/2008

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If you are having to pay more for your twin axle pitches, so what?

You are already paying more to buy the things, possibly paying more in insurance, paying more to buy a tugger to tow it with and it is costing you more in fuel to get the things to a caravan park. So what's a few pounds more just to park it?

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>>>  Just because people have spent money (in our case a large chunk of our pension lump sum) on a twin and suitable tow vehicle, that doesn't mean they have bottomless pockets.<<<

Like I say, you freely admit that it is costing you hundreds, if not thousands of pounds extra to buy twin axle vans and tuggers to pull them and then moan about having to pay a few extra pounds to park your larger than life vans.

Your van is 8 meters long. Mine is 3 meters. I aint complaining about having to pay the same as you, but i do!
However the time is coming when caravan park owners will, universally, start charging by the size of the vans and that will have nothing to do attitudes on here and everything to do with the damage these vans do to the pitches, the grass verges and the pitch sizes.

Many parks were laid out when the average touring van was very much smaller than some present day monsters. Parks who have to spend thousands of pounds upgrading their pitch sizes to accomodate these larger vans are not going to give you these spaces for nowt. However, they are not going to upgrade their whole park just for a few large vans and so special pitches will be set aside for these vans and you will pay through the nose for their use.

Surely those that want to have larger vans, buy them knowing that everything they do in the future is going to cost them more? The fact that you do not pay more at the moment for some sites is something to be thankful for but me thinks it would be silly to think that this situation will last for ever.

Health and Safety are clamping down on space between units both side to side and front and rear so if a pitch backs onto another  any van that does not leave the legal space will need a bigger pitch and if a site has to make changes to fit bigger vans on they are not going to do this for nothing.We were looking for a twin wheeler a few years ago but changed our minds when we thought about any possible extre charges.Our storage charge extra for twins as they take up more space and need more room to manoeuvre.Even the CC club ask for the length of the van when you book.

Andy 

80 to 90% of the sites we use are commercial.

The majority of these would not be able to accommodate an 8 meter van.

Taking what Jennifer said but changing it slightly to meet our own situation;- We have spent our hard earned pension on a Custom Built Caravan and a Small Ecconomical car and yes they cost us almost £20k.....but that is a one off, it is our last caravan, but not our last car, At 62 and 61, the caravan will see us out.

That does not mean that we do not watch the pennies. The investment was planned, our treat for our retirement. Due to my medical conditions, a tiny but supremely comfortable custom built van especially designed around our needs and able to accomplish the type of caravanning that we require from a van is all we could ever hope for.

So we think it is okay for sites to charge extra when they are supplying something extra that we require. But only for what we require!!!

Ofcourse it is all well and good saying that "If they ever try to charge me for blah, blah, blah" I will not pay it and I will go elsewhere, but, unfortunately in reality, it will not happen like that because you will not know until you get there and pay your money, just exactly what you are getting for the said money.

If you are going somewhere for a holiday of 3days, 4 days, a week, what have you, then you will have to book and be paying your deposit and then the rest up front when you arrive and before you have even seen the pitch.

During our month's tour of the Western Isles, we only booked two of a number of sites, one for 6 days and one for 8 days.

The 6 day one, while advertised as a caravan park (the only one in Stornoway) with serviced pitches, the actual pitches were not designed for caravans but for caravanettes with no awnings. 
2 berth caravans could use the pitches at a squeeze. Anything bigger would be on the large motorhome sloping gravel area.
Ofcourse we knew nothing of this until we got there and paid.
Despite being assured that we could have an awning up, our 3m by 3m awning was given a space 4 foot by 5 foot.  

The other site, the only one on Benbecula, was the oposite in every way and a joy to be on. We could have had a 30 meter circus big top up on it and there would still have been plenty of room.

When we bought the wee pop up van, I honestly thought that we would never have an issue with the sizes of pitches, being that our van is not much bigger than a small car. However the Laxdale Site in Stornoway proved us wrong. I am sure it is not the only one in the UK that advertises itself as a Caravan Park and yet it is totally insuitable for Caravans (of any size).

With no standardisation of pitch sizes be they for tents, caravans or motorhomes, laid down and agreed to between the clubs that cater for their members, then the arguements about what constitutes a fair pitch size and therefore price, will rumble on for a very long time.

Only once (in Stornoway) in 40 years of camping/caravanning has pitch size and what I paid for it, been an issue.
I am not likely to return there and so hopefully that will be my last. But that experience does make me wary of reading too much into fancy brochures with long distance photos of sites.