Sea View Camping at Bolton-le-Sands, Morecambe Bay

A few days back we were eyeballing the route south through Cumbria on the M6 and both noticed a campsite called Archers at Red Bank Farm.

It’s just a few miles from the motorway but has sea views across Morecambe Bay and distant views of the Cumbrian fells. It’s bookable online, fairly cheap to stay at £8 each a night, and gets great reviews. So here we are, and it’s pretty cool (N54.105234, W2.808954)!

The site has a couple of large fields, one with a set of stabalised pitches and hook-up, many looking out to the sea. Unsurprisingly they were all booked when we looked at short notice. But our solar system’s recharging our batteries each morning and they’re practically full before breakfast. So we don’t need to pay for hook-up and have been able to come here as a result, winner!

The weather was scorchio when we arrived but thunderstorms were forecast in the coming days, so we picked a spot where we can roll downhill (hopefully) if the grass gets saturated. So far we’ve only have one proper downpour during the night, not enough to worry about as the ground was very dry after the heatwave.

School’s out for summer now, and all English COVID-19 legal restrictions were removed nine days ago. So, for the first time in about 18 months, multiple families can get together for a holiday. And getting together they are, en-masse with banging tunes, barking dogs, screaming nippers and plenty booze to boot! Although almost all our fellow campers are keeping themselves to themselves, a select few are getting a tad hammered.

Steve, the site warden, came over for a chat with us this morning, he’s a fascinating fella who has been working as a site warden for four years to save up for a motorhome. He’s bought his van and is now counting down loo cleans, hoping to hit the road in for winter and return to warden life in the summers. He does a great job at keeping order on the site (rather him than me), but it was his day off yesterday.

The site has an official quiet-time policy from 10:30pm, but Ju lay awake until 2am last night listening to voices talking and laughing, as well as the odd car driving around at 1am. I zonked out as soon as I hit the sack. It’s truly a great thing that folks can meet up with mates and enjoy life again after the last year-and-a-half’s grimness, it really is. We just wish they’d do it a bit further away from our bed…

OK, that’s the moaning done with :-). Onwards and upwards.

Bolton-le-Sands is a largish village just north of Lancaster. The Lancaster (Westhoughton to Kendal) Canal was built through it in the late 18th Century, used to shift coal north and limestone south. One of England’s rare coastal canals, it’s 41 miles long and the longest lock-free stretch in the country, apparently. Bolton-le-Sands used to be named just Bolton, but with the arrival of the railways (which ultimately killed commercial canal traffic), the named was changed to Bolton-le-Sands to avoid confusion with, erm, Bolton.

The village is about a mile’s walk/cycle from the site, down a few narrow lanes with passing places. There you’ll find some lovely old cottages, calm walks along the canal, a small CO-OP, a Spar, chippy, takeaways and a couple of pubs. About 5 miles south of here lies Lancaster, and a similar distance along the coast brings you to Morecambe, if you’ve a car/bikes/take the bus.

Or you can run there, as Ju did yesterday, tracking down Eric’s statue and eyeballing a few free camping mohos. She also spotted a no-cockling-at-this-time-of-year sign. That’s saved me from wading out onto the endless mudflats, risking my neck for the wee bivalve molluscs in the fast-moving tides.

I’ve run a few miles the other way, across the almost-dry salt marshes in the direction of the distance Cumbian fells. There’s not much out there but for a few sheep and farmhouses and the isolated Warton Stock Car Club, deserted at the moment. I too came across a handful of mohos and vans free camping en route. It looked pretty cool to be honest, and they probably got a quieter night than we did last night.

We’ve done very little wild/free camping in England and Wales in our campervan and motorhomes, not just on this trip but ever, and have been chatting about why not. We miss the sense of freedom and isolation it brings. But we’ve spent almost all our time these past years on the continent and North Africa (as you can see on this motorhome overnight stop map), so haven’t been on the British Isles much anyway.

That said, at the moment we’re still drawn to more formal sites in our home nation, by a range of things:

• We’re in a big old white A class motorhome. We’ve seen quite a few van conversions parked up overnight around towns and along the road, and they’re FAR more subtle than the Great White Hulk of Zagan.
• We’re not full-timing. If we were then the average (roughly) £15-a-night we’re currently spending would become almost £5,500 a year, a significant chunk of most people’s total budget.
• There’s the whole legal-versus illegal versus tolerated overnight parking situation. Only a few European countries formally allow motorhomes to free-camp without the permission of the landowner, and the UK nations aren’t among them.
• Subtle overnight parking is generally tolerated in the UK (leave-no-trace/one night-only/not in big groups/not taking up all the space/away from homes). But since COVID there seem a good number of news stories about campervans massing in beauty spots and along popular tourist routes. Some are (allegedly) also dumping rubbish and black waste into the environment, giving us all a bad reputation.
• There seems to be a general cultural idea in the English population/media/some motorhome owners that vans *must* always use formal campsites. Other countries (particularly those with much lower population densities) don’t seem to have this mindset.
• Although campsites are busy at the moment, there is space available. Even this popular seaside site, which the warden told us is much busier than pre-COVID, has plenty of space if you don’t need hook-up.
• And finally there’s the fact wild camping sometimes means sleep deprivation with cars playing music at volume one million next to your head at 3am. From experience that can (usually) be avoided by using formal sites on a Friday and Saturday night.

So, for the foreseeable we’ll stick to finding campsites/aires/formally allowed overnight parking while we’re sunning ourselves on our native island.

But next up, we’re heading for home, so finding somewhere to stay won’t be an issue for a bit. We’ve some stuff to sort out, family and friends to see, gyming and running to do. I’ve only got 6 weeks now before attempting the GB Ultras Snowdonia 50 mile run (gulp!), so need to get some 20 mile+ runs done, and they’re easier to do at home.

We’ve had a cracking time wandering around the north-west, SUPing with mates, hiking, running, walking and hiding from the beating sunshine! Life’s pretty good folks.

Happy travels wherever you are, cheers, Jay

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