Caravan club sites in Kent

Kent does two jobs for caravanners. It is a touring county in its own right — cathedral city, chalk cliffs, oast houses and serious walking on the North Downs Way — and it is the staging post for the Channel, which fills the sites nearest Dover and Folkestone with outfits bound for France.

Where the sites are

Canterbury and the coast between Whitstable and Herne Bay hold the main cluster. The Canterbury club site is one of the few in the South East open all year, which makes it the default overnight stop before an early sailing. A second group sits on Romney Marsh and around Hythe and New Romney. Inland, sites near Tunbridge Wells and Bewl Water serve the Weald.

Getting there

The M20 and M2 both run from the M25 to the coast and are fast. The A21 drops south to Hastings for the Weald. The A2 and A20 are the older parallel routes and are useful when the motorways are up.

The thing to know about is Operation Brock. When cross-Channel freight backs up, a contraflow is installed on the M20 between junctions 8 and 9 with a 50mph limit and narrow lanes, and non-freight traffic gets squeezed. It appears at short notice around school holidays and French industrial action. Check National Highways before setting out and be ready to run the A20 through Ashford and Charing instead.

Local notes

If you are catching a ferry or the shuttle, allow far more time than the mileage suggests, and remember that both measure total outfit length at check-in. Book a pitch near Canterbury or Folkestone the night before rather than starting at three in the morning from home.

The A259 along the coast between Hythe and Rye narrows through Dymchurch and St Mary's Bay and crawls in summer. The lanes up onto the Downs behind Wye and Charing are steep and single track.

Kent's season runs long, from March into November, and the county is drier and warmer than most of England.