Elms Farm

Rose, please tell me a little bit about your farm and why you set up the CL? We've had our Farm here in Gloucestershire for 30 years and we built our farmhouse 25 years ago so it's a big anniversary year for us.

We run about 500 sheep and it's a very much a working farm. We also run a bed and breakfast with three en-suite Rooms which is very busy and we've been thinking about diversifying a little further for some years.

The idea of a CL site had been on my mind as a further income stream, and eventually, we got round to it this year. We've just opened and we've had some lovely people. We should have done it years ago!

Did you do much research before you started? Yes, we did a bit. I spoke mostly to my friend down the road who has a CL and she helped me. Our Field officer from the Club, Phil Batchellor was very helpful and we've invested in putting electric hook-ups in. That cost us around £7,000 but we think it will be worth it, and we hope to get a return on investment in two or three years.

Our pricing at £15 is based on what our local competitors are charging. We are not yet taking a deposit but we might think of doing so, particularly for bank holidays.

What's special about your site? We're a working farm and we have fabulous views over the hills of Gloucestershire, but if you're a steam train enthusiast you can see the Gloucester and Warwickshire heritage railway which runs between Cheltenham Racecourse and Broadway, where the Club site is. It mainly operates at weekends and looks magnificent. They recently had an event, and our site was full of steam enthusiasts in their caravans.

How are you marketing the site and have you thought about online booking? Because we're near the Broadway Club site, we've had quite a few members drop-in just to look at our site and I’m pleased to say that they have subsequently booked. We now have business cards available on our doorstep so that people coming to look at our site can take a card away and remember who we are.

For my bed and breakfast, I'm using the online booking site; Free to book, so I'm thinking that I should add the caravan pitches to my account alongside the B&B bedrooms. I just need to figure out how to do this.

Do you think you will invest further in the site? Yes. We might put in hardstanding in a few years time once we've had a return on investment on the electric hook-up.

This interview was conducted in June 2019