Out & About Summer 2021

Dorset campsite is Number One Dorset campsite Higher Moor Farm has been rated as the top campsite in the UK New research from leading motorhome rental company Camptoo has ranked the 10 top camping hotspots in the UK, with Higher Moor Farm in Dorset taking the top spot. The 10 most popular camping regions in the country were selected based on the number of campsites in the area, with the top individual site for each region then singled out based on the online popularity –judged by Instagram posts and TripAdvisor reviews. Average climate conditions (annual sun hours and rainfall) were measured, along with the number of nearby hiking routes, the quality of air in the area and nearby landmarks to visit to give an ultimate overall score of the top 10 campsites in the UK. Herding Hill campsite in Northumberland took second place on the list, boasting the most landmarks nearby compared with the rest of the list. As expected, popular camping locations made up the top five with Long Meadow (New Forest), Deepdale (Norfolk) and Mains Farm (Lake District) ranking third, fourth and fifth respectively. Gwithian Farm, located in the UK’s unofficial camping capital Cornwall, ranked in joint sixth place alongside Beech Croft in the Peak District.

Out&About leisure

National Parks made up the rest of the list as By The Way Hostel and Campsite (Loch Lomond), Grantown on Spey (Cairngorms) and Tyn Cornel (Snowdonia) coming in eighth, ninth and 10th place. Camptoo’s Head of Wanderlust Ed Bassett said: “This was a really interesting piece of research to be involved with and it gave us some very unexpected results. “We knew national parks would dominate the list, but had no idea just how much with an impressive seven campsites making the list from parks all across the UK. “It will be interesting to see if any of these results change over the coming months with campsites beginning to open their doors to the public again and record numbers expected with travel restrictions meaning Brits are more likely to book a staycation this summer.

Sharrow Beach, Whitsand Bay, Cornwall

Gyllyngvase Beach, Falmouth

Keeping it clean With foreign travel still uncertain and only a handful of countries making the green list, staycations are on the cards for a lot of Brits this summer. But not all holidays live up to expectations, and some coastal trips can be let down by smelly water, littered sand and run-down towns. With this in mind, SaveOnEnergy.com/uk set out to find Britain’s beaches with the cleanest, or filthiest, water. To do this, they investigated levels of faecal indicators in the ocean, as tested yearly by the government, to find which beaches are best for a paddle and which are best left alone. They analysed data from 546 beaches around England, Scotland and Wales, giving them a ranking

taking four of the top spots - Kinghorn (Harbour Beach) in Fife is the worst, followed by Heads of Ayr and Ayr (South Beach), both in Strathclyde and Fisherrow Sands, East Lothian. Rhyl in Denbighshire, North Wales takes fifth spot. SaveOnEnergy.com/uk found that the dirtiest beach in England is Southwold The Denes Beach in East Suffolk. The cleanest and dirtiest beaches were classified based on a combination of the water’s score for EC and IE, where a low combined FIO score translated to a cleaner beach. All data was collected in 2019. Data could not be collected in 2020 due to the national pandemic, and data for 2021 has not been collected yet.

Kinghorn Harbour, Fife from 0 (dirtiest) to 100 (cleanest). Sharrow Beach and Gyllyngvase in Cornwall take joint top spot, closely followed by Silver Bay Rhoscolyn, on the Isle of Anglesey. Cornwall takes the next spots, with Gwynver Beach and Fistral South Beach in joint third and Booby’s Bay, in fourth position. Poole Shore Road Beach makes it into the top five, in fifth position. According to the survey, Scotland dominates the dirtiest beach list,

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O&A SUMMER 2021