Staying by myself

If you've decided to stay in a holiday park instead of a hotel during your next holiday and you've never used these type of lodgings before, here are a few tips you should make a note of.

If you're building a campfire or using a barbecue, do so responsibly

Most holiday parks are laid out in such a way that their cabins or campervans are positioned in long rows, with a gap of perhaps a few metres between each one. If this is the case with the holiday park you have chosen and the park permits its occupants to have barbecues or to light campfires, you must do this in a responsible manner that does not affect those holidaying in the neighbouring campervans or cabins.

For example, you should avoid making your barbecue so large that it produces an excessive amount of smoke, as this smoke could then travel into the adjacent cabins or campervans and make the occupants cough or get watery eyes. This excess smoke might also cling to any wet clothes that your temporary neighbours have hung out to dry outside their accommodation and make them smell.

Similarly, you should ensure that your campfire is built in a safe manner, with a strong boundary around it that will stop it from singeing the nearby grass or getting out of control. You should also ensure that you build it a few feet away from any areas where other holiday-goers may walk so that they do not have to take a detour to avoid it and so they don't step in a pile of ashes after you've extinguished it.

Be extra conscientious when it comes to your rubbish

Whilst the holiday park may have bins spotted around the place that you can use for a small amount of the day-to-day rubbish you create (like the water bottles and ice-cream wrappers you're left with after a trip to the shop), they're not generally supposed to be used for large amounts of household-style refuse. You will typically need to keep this in your own rubbish bags in your lodgings and then take it home with you.

As such, it's important to be particularly careful about the way that you deal with the rubbish you produce whilst you're holidaying. You should, for example, rinse out your food containers and crush them to make them compact so that they don't stink up or consume too much room in your (probably modest-sized) cabin or campervan. This will also ensure that you don't end up with flies in your lodgings. You should also avoid leaving rubbish lying around outside your accommodation because in addition to making the shared ground space unpleasant for your neighbours to be, this could also attract unwanted wildlife to your area of the holiday park.