The Clocks Went Back Yesterday - and Your Campsite Is Now Dark by Five in the Afternoon

White Tesla Model Y parked on a European campsite pitch after dark with the boot open, a portable power station and lantern glowing beside it

Yesterday morning, at one o’clock UTC, the clocks went back across the European Union, the UK, Norway and Switzerland. Summer time, which started on 29 March, is over.

The numbers are less abstract than they sound. In London the sun went from setting around 18:30 on Saturday to roughly 16:50 on Sunday. Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome and Amsterdam all moved from 03:00 to 02:00, which means the same thing everywhere: the light arrives earlier in the morning and it is gone by the time you finish work.

And no, it is not going away. The European Commission published a fresh schedule covering 2027 to 2031 in March this year, and the next change is set for 28 March 2027.

For anyone who camps in the shoulder season, this is the week the rules change. Not the campsite rules. The light rules.

What actually gets harder from here

Nothing dramatic happens to a campsite in late October. The grass is wetter, the air is damper, and the gate is the same gate. What changes is that you now do everything in the dark:

You arrive in the dark. Leave after work on a Friday and the last hour of the drive is done with headlights on, on roads you do not know
You set up in the dark. Pitching anything by torchlight takes twice as long and you will find the mistakes in the morning
You cook in the dark, usually while holding a phone in one hand
You pack up in the dark, on the morning you leave, when everything is wet and the boot is already full
The cabin gets damper. Two people breathing in a sealed car overnight puts a surprising amount of water on the glass

None of that is a reason to stop. It is a reason to be organised about the last ninety minutes of the day.

One safety note that deserves its own paragraph

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents repeats the same warning every autumn, and it is worth passing on: road casualties rise once the evenings get dark, and pedestrians, cyclists and children are the most exposed. On a campsite, that translates directly – the walk to the shower block in a dark coat, on wet grass, with cars reversing.

Pack a torch you can actually find, and something reflective to wear. Slow down on unlit lanes. It costs nothing and it is the single most useful piece of kit in this article.

Where you can still go, and for how much

The good news is that the season has not closed, it has just thinned out. The Caravan and Motorhome Club said this week that 50 of its Club and Affiliated campsites stay open all year, with heated washrooms, hot showers and hook-ups at many of them, from GBP 31.30 a night. A few examples for two adults on a hardstanding pitch with an awning:

Brighton, on the edge of the South Downs – from GBP 37.10
Minehead, on the edge of Exmoor – from GBP 33.70
White Water Park in County Durham, next to the Tees Barrage white-water course – from GBP 31.30
Hunter’s Moon in Dorset, bordering Wareham Forest – from GBP 33.20
Black Horse Farm in Kent, reopened in July after a rebuild – from GBP 31.30

If you would rather chase the sun, the other pattern is well known: Algarve campsites drop to their lowest rates from roughly October to March, the roads empty out, and the towns are walkable again. The north of Portugal is a different story – wet, windy, sudden fronts off the Atlantic – so the advice from people who do it every year is to start north in late October and drift south as it cools. And to solve condensation before you go, because heating and ventilation matter far more than a fancy awning.

If you are crossing into Schengen from outside it

One practical note, because it catches people out at ferry ports. The EU’s Entry/Exit System has been fully operational since 10 April 2026, and it registers fingerprints and a facial image for non-EU passport holders instead of stamping a passport. Airport and airline bodies reported this month that waits still routinely exceed two hours, with up to five at peak times at the worst hubs, and the flexibility that let border posts pause biometric capture during a crush lapsed on 6 September.

Two things follow. Budget the time at the border rather than assuming it. And if anybody tries to sell you an ETIAS: there is no such thing yet. The scheme has no published start date and the EU is actively warning people about sites charging for it.

The dark arrival, in eight steps

This is the whole trick, and it is not complicated – it is just decided in advance rather than at the pitch:

Sort the boot before you leave. Torch, warm layer, kettle and bedding on top. Everything else below. You will not want to unpack in the rain to find a head torch
Know your pitch number and the gate code before the last twenty minutes of the drive, not after
Bring one light that lights the whole car, not four torches that each light a corner
Eat before you set up camp, not after. One hot thing, quickly, then the bed
Crack a window. Ventilation is the difference between a damp morning and a dry one – a mesh screen means you can leave it open without inviting the local wildlife in
Keep the key inside the car or on your person, never loose in a bag at the bottom of the boot
Charge everything you will need at 7am the night before, off the car’s own battery or a separate one, so you are not rationing at breakfast
Leave the pitch tidier than you found it, in daylight, so that packing up in the dark is a five-minute job instead of a twenty-minute one

The kit that makes the dark part easy

None of this is exotic. It is just the difference between a good night and a bad one:

2048Wh LiFePO4 Portable Power Station – a 2048Wh power station so lights, phones and the fridge never come out of the car’s range. In the dark season this is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade
Tesla Trunk Organiser Box – a trunk organiser, because step one above only works if the boot has a system instead of a pile
Tesla Induction Cooktop – one hot meal, indoors, doors shut, in under ten minutes
35L Dual-Zone Compressor Fridge – a compressor fridge that runs on 12V, so you are not looking for ice in a town where everything shut at six
Tesla Inflatable Air Mattress – the bed, inflated in two minutes and flat enough to sleep on properly
Tesla Roof Top Tent – for the clear, cold, windless nights, when being up top is genuinely better than being inside
Magnetic Mesh Bug Screens – magnetic mesh screens, so the window stays cracked all night and the glass stays dry

The light is going to go at five o’clock whether we like it or not. The only thing you get to decide is whether that ruins the evening or not.