When it comes to settling down under canvas for the night, it seems that the North West is home to the UK’s happiest campers, according to data from online camping booking site Pitchup.com.
As is traditional at the turn of a new year the site, founded by former lastminute.com head os strategy, business and paid search Dan Yates, crunched the numbers from the reviews left by its users, and in terms of happy campers, North West outdoor enthusiasts were found to be by far the most positive – or should that be least prone to complain about soggy sleeping bags and noisy neighbours?
The bean counters at Pitchup took average scores given on the site by postcode, and found that campers from Chester and Wigan were tied for first place, or should that be at ‘level pegging’ – scoring their outdoor destinations of choice an average of 9.35 out of 10. Chester took the tie break for top spot thanks to its nature fans leaving 2,538 reviews compared to Wigan’s 1,095.
Liverpool campers weren’t far behind in third with an average 9.34 score before Shrewsbury broke the North West stranglehold with a score of 9.32 in fourth spot, although this was another tie, with Bolton residents averaging the same score, but leaving only 1,074 reviews compared to the Shrews’ 1,530.
Intriguingly, the least positive reviews were overwhelmingly left by campers from Celtic lands, who you’d think would be used to the cold. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Aberdeen, Motherwell and Kircaldy all made the bottom 10, while Lancaster was the only Northern city to feature in the complaining spots.
We’re not sure what we can read into this, other than that campsites in Scotland may be colder and wetter, although Pitchup does feature sites across Europe as well as the UK. In fact, despite our Scottish cousins’ apparent perennial dissatisfaction with their outdoor accommodation, their grumbles paled into insignificance next to the Dutch, who appear to be Europe’s pickiest campers with an average score of just 8.2. That makes Glasgow and Lincoln’s shared bottom UK placing with 9.2 seem to be in definite glamping territory.
