Why does it look the way it does?

Back to www.CL.Odam.org home page.

Why did I start this service?

I want to make it easier to choose CLs - both for myself and for other Caravan Club members. Also, a modest income from the service is useful!

I started offering CL websites after years of looking for information on CLs as a Caravan Club member. May I explain how I look for sites? I expect many others do it the same way - and that is what prompted the websites I offer.

I look in the Caravan Club Handbook, or more usually on their website, for details. I tend to look first at the CLs with websites, as I can see much more clearly what they have to offer. I expect to click on a website link and find pictures of the CL.

Sometimes, the links take me to a general camping website, where I would have to search again for the particular CL - in many cases these sites give less information than was on the Caravan Club site and are therefore a complete waste of effort. If I have to search again, I am quite likely to go back to the Caravan Club site and try the next CL.

If I can't find anything in the place I want, I use Google or Altavista to look for caravan 'much binding in the marsh'. I expect this sort of search to find commercial sites for me - I wouldn't really expect it to find CLs as they are only of interest to Caravan Club members.

Web searches also turn up the general camping websites where I have to search again. I am more likely to look at them when searching for commercial sites which would not be on the Caravan Club website.

What my service does is to provide a web address, to include in the Caravan Club handbook and website, that links directly to your details and pictures. There is no facility for searching as I assume people looking for CLs have done that on the Caravan Club website or handbook. In any case, there would be little point in searching through just the CLs using my service - it's a nice dream, but I can't imagine that every CL owner will want to use my service!

I also provide an e-mail address linked to your website address. It redirects e-mail to your current e-mail address. The reason for this is that you can change your e-mail provider, update the redirection, and the Caravan Club website and handbook remain valid. I have in the past found quite a few invalid e-mail addresses in the handbook because people have changed their e-mail provider.