For one night only, The Camping and Caravanning Club hosted a rather unusual campsite, on a barge on the river Thames, taking in views of London’s Tower Bridge. The reason? To launch National Camping and Caravanning Week 2019 and celebrate 100 years of touring caravans!

Julia Bradbury, President of The Camping and Caravanning Club, is a well-known outdoor enthusiast, but this isn’t the first unusual campsite she’s stayed on. To launch NCCW in 2016, she spent the night in a tent on top of the O2 arena. 

This year, she marked the occasion by spending the night in an Eccles 560 on this floating campsite, waking to stunning views of Tower Bridge and the London skyline. 

National Camping and Caravanning Week is an annual celebration of the great outdoors and the outdoor lifestyle, encompassing camping in all its forms; in tents, caravans and, of course, motorhomes. 

It’s all about getting out and about in this wonderful country of ours, something that us motorcaravanners know how to make the most of! The week runs from 27 May – 2 June and is the perfect excuse to haul your ‘van out of storage and get on the road to explore somewhere new, just in case you needed that little extra push. 

There’s something in it for you, too; get involved by sharing your touring photos on social media, tagging them #lovemycaravan, and you could win the NCCW competition for an Outwell inflatable awning and accessories. Details on this competition can be found at www.nccw.co.uk.

The Camping and Caravanning Club are running a second competition, too, for an Eccles 560 caravan, a Vango Vienna 400 awning and a year’s Club membership. So if you’ve got caravanning friends looking for an upgrade, or non-touring friends that want to try out the lifestyle without heavy investment, point them in the direction of www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk for competition details. 

The caravan’s 100th birthday was celebrated with this party on the Thames. The campsite featured the Eccles 560 and a tent from Field Candy, on a barge moored just off Butler’s Warf in the shadow of London Bridge. Household names such as Christopher Biggins joined the party, and there was an impressive chocolate caravan cake for guests to tuck into as the sun set behind the bridge’s iconic towers.