Taunton isn't one to shout about itself. It is the type of place which simply gets on with it - cider festivals, market days, rugby crowds filling the streets - as the bigger cities grab all the attention. Talk to anyone who has enjoyed a weekend on the Levels, a thermos of tea and a decent view, and you will hear the same answer: caravan life around Taunton hits differently edwardjamescaravans.co.uk/
Here is what is really pulling caravanners to this part of the world.
Somerset has always been caravan country. The roads meander across the agricultural land like a web cast from a great height, curling past orchards and hedgerows unchanged for generations. Taunton sits squarely in the middle of it - roughly an hour from the Jurassic Coast, forty minutes from Exmoor, virtually on the doorstep of the Quantock Hills. That is not just convenient. That is a genuine jackpot.
The sites themselves are worth making a trip for.
You will find campsites and caravan parks spread throughout the Taunton region; small family owned patches; the type in which the dogs of the owner are the first to meet you at the reception desk; larger, well-equipped parks with electric hookups, laundry facilities, and communal areas that actually make you want to talk to strangers. The Cornish Farm Touring Park comes up time and again. There is a solid reason for that. The house is roomy, the baths run, and you are not so near town that you get engulfed in it.
One thing that does not get enough attention, the question of buying or renting a caravan locally. Taunton has a number of dealers who have everything, from entry-level tourers, to the giant twin-axle monsters, which demand a second look, and possibly a second mortgage. Swift, Bailey, Coachman. Names that seasoned caravanners debate the way football fans argue over their teams. If you are new to all this, walk into a dealership with an open mind. Request the employees to demonstrate to you what fits your towing automobile. It will spare you a great deal of grief later on.
If you are only thinking about getting into caravanning, hiring first makes a lot of sense. Several operators across Somerset offer short-term static caravan hire, especially around Bridgwater Bay and Taunton outskirts. You get a proper taste of it without signing up to something that starts depreciating before you have cleared the dealer's car park. Genuinely smart thinking.
The local caravanning community deserves a mention of its own.
Yes, it might sound like the sort of thing people always say, but the Caravan and Motorhome Club regional network does have something going on. Local rallies, coastal day trips, members sharing site reviews like classified information. The warmth of it is hard to fake. You park beside a person, and you see that he or she has the awning brand you are using and now you are being offered a slice of some homemade fruit cake by someone and you and she are arguing about gas and electric heating.
Taunton itself earns its keep. All the town centre has is good butchers, a covered market, independent shops that are yet to be flattened by retail chains. That matters when you are caravanning, because provisioning properly before setting off is everything. Nobody fancies a twenty-mile detour for a decent loaf of bread on a weekday morning.
There are a couple of useful things I would like to know about, in case you are coming around this way:
Somerset towing equates to hills. The Quantocks especially will test your rig thoroughly. The next thing you should do is to check your weight on the nose. This is not fearmongering - it is simple physics. Any caravan loaded badly on a 1-in-5 incline, is not the idea of a holiday to anybody.
Storage between trips is another thing worth planning for. You will find a good number of secure compounds around Taunton, with gates, cameras, and some offering covered parking. Rates differ, but with the value of a tourer, skimping on storage is a false economy.
Weather, evidently, has its part. Somerset gets rain. The Levels flood. If anyone argues otherwise, they have never been near the M5 around Bridgwater in mid-winter. That said, caravanning here in autumn, October in particular, is something else entirely - better than summer in ways that are hard to put into words. The light is different. The sites are quieter. You can even hear yourself thinking.
It is not a single thing that causes Taunton to serve as a caravan hub. It has a topography overlaid on top of infrastructures, and it is crowned by that relaxed local ambience that makes you end up spending more time than you thought you would. Very few places manage that combination, and most take generations to build it.
There are things that one trips over. Taunton and caravanning is one of them.