Fifty UK Campsites Just Stayed Open for Winter – and a Tesla Is the Cheapest Way to Use Them

The Caravan and Motorhome Club said something quietly useful this week: 50 of its UK Club and Affiliated campsites stay open all year. Not “open until October”, not “open weekends” – open, through the coldest, wettest, darkest part of the year, with heated washrooms, hot showers and electric hook-ups at many of them.

The cheapest of the six it singled out starts at GBP 31.30 a night for two adults on a hardstanding pitch with awning. Find me a hotel room for two with a hot shower for thirty-one pounds in England and I will eat my sleeping bag.

The six it picked, and why each is worth a weekend

• Brighton, East Sussex – from GBP 37.10. On the edge of the South Downs and two miles from the city centre, so you can walk in for the Royal Pavilion and the seafront and be back at the pitch for dark. There is a food outlet on site.
• Minehead, Somerset – from GBP 33.70. A hillside site on the edge of Exmoor, fifteen minutes’ walk from town, and the start of the 630-mile South West Coast Path if you fancy a section of it. Dunster’s medieval village and castle are close.
• White Water Park, County Durham – from GBP 31.30. Next to the Tees Barrage International White Water Centre, with an international-standard rafting course and a viewing area. Watch, or take part.
• Hunter’s Moon, Dorset – from GBP 33.20. Bordering Wareham Forest, with trails straight off the pitch. Clouds Hill – T. E. Lawrence’s retreat – Corfe Castle and the Jurassic Coast are all within reach.
• Black Horse Farm, Kent – from GBP 31.30. Reopened on 3 July 2026 after redevelopment: 107 touring pitches, 99 of them hardstanding, on the Kent Downs, with Canterbury a short hop away.
• Meathop Fell, Cumbria – from GBP 33.70. Southern Lake District, quiet pitching areas divided by shrubs, and 2026 is the 160th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth, with the 125th anniversary of Peter Rabbit following in 2027. Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage at Grasmere is nearby.

Membership of the Club costs GBP 69 a year and opens up more than 2,600 campsites across the UK and Europe. You do not have to be a member at every affiliated site, but at Club sites you generally do.

Why an electric car is oddly good at winter

The standard objection to winter camping is that it is cold, dark and you have to keep something running to stay warm. A Tesla removes most of that objection, and then removes the dangerous part too.

• Camp Mode heats a sealed cabin all night. No gas, no stove indoors, no carbon monoxide, no generator, no noise. In the UK there are real fatalities every year from people burning fuel inside tents and awnings; an EV simply does not have that failure mode.
• It is a heat pump, not a fan heater. That matters enormously in damp UK cold, which is the worst kind. It moves heat rather than making it, so a night at 3 degrees costs far less range than people expect.
• You can pre-heat from bed. Warm car, cleared screen, before you open the door.
• It is silent, which at a quiet winter site with four other vans on it is the difference between being a good neighbour and being That Person.

Two honest caveats. Cold does cost range – plan for noticeably more consumption below freezing, and arrive with more charge than you think you need. And condensation is the real enemy of winter car camping: crack a window or use mesh screens, and dry everything out before you pack.

The one rule that catches people out

England and Wales do not have a right to roam that covers camping. Unlike Norway, Sweden or Scotland, parking up for the night on land that is not a campsite generally needs the landowner’s permission, and “a nice lay-by” is not permission. Scotland’s Land Reform Act does allow responsible access, but with real conditions and local restrictions.

Which is exactly why a list of fifty legal, heated, open-all-year sites for thirty-odd pounds is worth more than any amount of clever searching.

And the kit that turns a hardstanding pitch in November into somewhere you would happily spend three nights:

• Tesla Inflatable Air Mattress – the car becomes a proper bed, and it works on a hardstanding pitch where tent pegs do not
• Tesla Roof Top Tent – or stay above the wet ground; a rooftop tent is the answer to a site that is basically a wet field
• 2048Wh LiFePO4 Portable Power Station – 2048Wh for lights, a pump and laptops, so you are not burning the car’s own battery to make toast
• Tesla Induction Cooktop – a hot meal indoors without wrestling a camp stove in the rain
• 35L Dual-Zone Compressor Fridge – dual-zone, so the milk is not sharing space with the beer
• Magnetic Mesh Bug Screens – ventilation without everything that flies, and it helps with the condensation
• Tesla Trunk Organiser Box – because in November everything you own is wet and the boot needs to stay organised

Fifty sites, thirty pounds a night, hot showers and a car that heats itself. Winter is not the off-season. It is the cheap season.