Forestry England is running a summer trial allowing motorhomes and campervans to park overnight at seven sites from July 16 to September 14. Cost is £16 per night (£14 for members), stays are limited to two nights, and vehicles must be fully self-contained with no external equipment or cooking.
Good news for motorhome and campervanners in England. If you have ever wished that the UK had more Aires like they do over in Europe, or you've used the Stay the Night scheme in Scotland and wish that England had more of those, well, now they do. I am really pleased and excited to share that Forestry England are doing a trial on letting motorhomes and campervans stay overnight in some of their car park locations. Now, this is exactly how Forestry Scotland started a few years ago with their Stay the Night scheme. They had a few select locations and the scheme did really well, and then they expanded it to more locations in the summers, and now it's open all year round in a lot of locations. So there is a lot of hope that this might spread to other locations within Forestry England. But let me share with you what this trial is doing at the moment. So it is now open and online, available for bookings, but you can only stay between between select dates this summer. Let me read this so I make sure I get the dates right. So it's from the 16th of July to the 14th of September. Now there will only be limited parking for motorhomes and campervans in each car park, and it is just a car park, so there are no facilities. You need to be completely self-contained. That also means that you can't get any outdoor gear or equipment out, so there's no warnings, No outside cooking or barbecues, no porta-tent or porta-loo or anything like that outside. You have to have everything inside contained in your vehicles, just like a lot of the airs over in Europe. Now, like I say, there are seven locations that this is being trialled at for this summer, and these are Cardenham Woods in Cornwall, Wendover Woods in Buckinghamshire, Bedbury National Pine Tum in Kent, High Lodge Thetford Forest in Suffolk, the Jeskins Community Woodland in Kent. Kisburn Forest in Lancashire and Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Now, Kielder Forest has actually had a facility like this for a little while, and the price for that isn't going to change. So Kielder Forest is £15 a night per vehicle, and that is paid— I believe it's by the Ringo system last time I used it, which is an online pay payment app that you can use for car parks and things. So you would need to have that downloaded onto your phone. I strongly recommend downloading it before you get there just in case the signal isn't particularly good, but it basically means that you will go there, you scan the little QR code in the car park and you say you're a campervan or motorhome and you will pay the £15 for the night. Now all the other locations are going to be £16 for the night unless you are a member of Forestry England, in which case you get a little discount. I believe it's £14 for a night for members. But those are the 7 locations. You're going to be able to stay for up to 2 nights per location, which is great, and they've actually done like a little route where you can go from one to the other if you want to. But like I say, the spaces are going to be limited, and if they're full, you're not going to be able to stay. So pre-booking is strongly, strongly recommended. You can arrive anytime from midday, and you need to then leave by 11:30 AM the next day, unless of course you've paid for 2 nights, in which case it'll be 11:30 the day after that. Now, this is fantastic news for those of us who are already used to being off-grid and already set up to stay off-grid, but I know how daunting that can be. And if you've got a motorhome or camper van and you want a little bit more freedom and you want to know about things like inverters and solar panels and setting up your van and how to make your waste work longer and all the rest of the stuff, then that's exactly what I put together in my Off-Grid and Wild Parking Toolkit. I completely redid that recently, particularly the ebook, which went from about 40 pages to like 200+ pages, so it's now a really in-depth step-by-step guide on how to set your vehicle up so that you can be self-contained, you can use places like this, you can use Aires and all these other incredible stopovers all around your So I'm going to leave the link on how you can get that in the notes. I'm also going to leave the link for the Forestry England site, which is how you can book on these places. But mostly, I would really love to know your thoughts and opinions on this, so please do share those below. Now obviously, if you do use these places, please, please don't litter them. Don't leave your waste. Don't leave a mess. Literally leave no trace, and hopefully this scheme will grow and it will give us much more freedom and flexibility. Flexibility in years to come. If you do want to know more about staying off-grid, I've also got a free checklist which I will share with you. Again, the link for that will be in the notes, and you can also watch this video which will be helpful. I will see you there. Take care, bye!
