Rocking up at Gibraltar Farm

Rocking up at Gibraltar Farm

Gibraltar Farm campsite in Silverdale is one of our favourites and has the bonus of only being about 45 minutes from home. First, though, we headed to Arnside for a spot of breakfast and a walk with Boris along the estuary.

Parking is always at a premium in Arnside, although when we arrived just after 11am it wasn’t too bad. Whoever parked this Motorhome didn’t help though:

After a potter around the shops and galleries, we drove around the coast road, through Silverdale to Gibraltar Farm, arriving just after 1pm. The site was quite quiet after a busy half-term week and we had plenty of options as far as pitches were concerned. We tucked ourselves away at the top of a field and soon had everything sorted.

We were only staying for one night so we’d travelled light with no trailer or Glawning – the cost for one night on a Sunday is £20 with electricity but over-55s get a £5 discount, which is pretty good value (we did have to pay £1 for Boris which, frankly, is money well spent).

The stewards warned us that it was Tick season ( a couple of dogs and a young girl had both had them over the weekend) and, sure enough, we’d only been there half an hour when Alison found one on Bozzer’s back. Fortunately, we always carry Tick removers and I had it out before it could start sucking blood from him. He’s due another dose of Flea and Tick treatment, so hopefully we won’t get any more.

IMG_1705 (Not for the squeamish).

It was a warm afternoon with the sun eventually making an appearance, so we chilled at the van for a while, sank a couple of ciders and a two of us may have had a snooze.

There’s a pub called The Silverdale Hotel which is only a short walk away, so we headed down for a couple more, on what was now a glorious day. The beer garden isn’t great for Boris – he doesn’t like the large stone gravel but there were other dogs to bark at (he took exception to Norman the sheepdog straight away), so some of his needs were met.

It was too nice to walk straight back to the van so we headed down to the shore and sat on a bench admiring the view.

I got the drone out when we got back, whilst Alison made some sandwiches, then we chilled for the rest of the evening. Bliss.

The facilities on site are great with one of the best toilet/shower blocks we’ve seen, although the smoking bin outside the Gents was out of use because some Blue Tits had made their nest in it.

The site allows you to stay until 1pm on your departure day which is much better than those sites which say 10am or 11am. There’s time to pack away at your leisure and have some breakfast before you set off. In the event, we got away about 11.30 and headed to the nearby town of Carnforth for some lunch, but not before we had a visit from a Little Owl which came and perched on the fence near our van – I haven’t seen one for ages, so I was thrilled to bits.

There’s a cafe on Carnforth Station (it’s where Brief Encounter was filmed) so I paid our £4 to park and headed for the cafe on Platform 1. Unfortunately, the kitchen was closed, so we left without eating and headed into the small town to find somewhere else. We were glad we did because we stumbled upon the Edelweiss Cafe, which is run by a couple of Austrian ladies and offers Austrian food. I had the Weiner Schnitzel and Alison had something else, the name of which has completely escaped me! It looked good anyway.

The drive back down the M6 was fairly straightforward and we were back in Leyland by mid-afternoon – a great one nighter then, and close enough to home to do again soon.

Things We’ve Learned:

Silverdale and Arnside seem to have their own micro-climate – we’ve never had rain when we’ve visited

We mustn’t leave it so long to visit the area again

You don’t need a week to have a good time

Travelling light can be a plus

Alison makes a mean Ham, Pease Pudding and Mustard sandwich

There’s a full set of photos here: FLICKR