Riverside Caravan Park (Lancaster)

It's a delightful across-fields walk to the campsite’s most spectacular feature - the river. There you'll find a water rush, a fall over flat stones as the River Wenning, shallow and fast running, makes its way to the River Lune and thence into Morecambe Bay, the curve of sea that defines the south fringe of Cumbria.
 
The river is spectacular. A place to come to fish (you'll find sea trout, brown trout and the odd salmon late in the season). It will only cost you a modest charge per day to fish here and you are guaranteed to bring home the supper. If you don’t fancy fishing, just let the dogs splash about in the shallow water – or sit munching a picnic and gaze at the pace of foaming water over stones.

We’re in Lancashire, close to the Yorkshire border. The terrain’s relatively flat, the walking is easy and six public footpaths run from the perimeter of the park.

The village of High Bentham is five minutes walk way. It has four pubs, three of which serve meals, two food shops, a butcher, baker and two takeaways.

Riverside was established in 1969 by Bateman Marshall, a beef and sheep farmer who seized an opportunity like so many others in that dawn-of-camping era. The family has invested heavily since those early days. The result is a campsite with an ample facilities list: TV hook-ups, hardstandings, laundry, washing-up room, heated shower and toilet building, an information room containing a computer and innumerable walks pamphlets, a games room with pool tables, table tennis and air hockey tables, and a 500-plus book free lending library.

The campsite is on the edge of the Forest of Bowland, the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District and not far from Lancaster and Morecambe Bay.

Its springtime dawn chorus volume is well known; this campsite’s natural appeal is its strong point. Take the river, for instance, Families don’t just fish in it. It’s shallow enough to splash about in. And if you launch a dinghy parallel with the campsite’s reception office you can drift down to those shallow rapids we discovered earlier… great fun!

Wi-Fi is available all over the campsite; fibre optics are laid to each pitch. And the security system is so sophisticated that the pitch occupants’ key fobs which admits them to the shower building and the entry gate inform the site’s computer system exactly what time you enter and depart. On the subject of time, though, be aware of the site’s shower system: You get four minutes of water – then it will automatically switch off and will not reset for another 10 minutes; there is, though, a family shower which will give you six minutes.

Families are catered for in another way, too. Up on a bank above the site is one of the most inventive play equipment selections we’ve seen on a campsite. There’s a zip-wire, a huge shiny metal helter-skelter, a rope bridge, a self-propelled roundabout that has a rope construction above it to cling to – hard to describe – just go there, take the kids – and enjoy!

The buildings are faced in local stone and roofed with Welsh slate – everything on the park is in-keeping with the natural appeal.