LIFE UNDER LOCKDOWN
Just like campsites everywhere, Bagwell Farm Touring Park, on Dorset’s dramatic Jurassic Coast, had to close to visitors as we went into lockdown.
Site manager Karen Kennedy got in touch to tell us what this meant to the campsite and what has been happening there.
“It was heartbreaking, closing the site. Phoning and emailing all of our expected arrivals to ask them to stay home instead was surreal,” she says.
It soon became clear to the team at Bagwell Farm that there were some people on local sites who had nowhere else to go – carers unable to live in their normal home, workers stranded between live-in jobs, touring full-timers – and needed their assistance. “With the help of our MP, emergency planning councillor and environmental health team, we managed to get an exemption for these people to join us on the site.
“So long as they met the exemption criteria, they were able to stay. We allocated a separate bathroom or shower room to each guest and left plenty of room between the pitches,” says Karen.
The team also got involved in helping the local community, she explains: “At the start of the outbreak, we gave out a letter to each of our neighbours, offering to deliver essential groceries. From a basket of shopping to the odd items that online shops didn’t have, we delivered to the most vulnerable.”
During April, life on the park was very quiet. “Apart from the birdsong,” says Karen. “The positive part was that we had much more time and space to listen to and watch the wildlife. The kestrels have been very active and are now nesting close to the park. We have a large wildflower meadow, and some areas which are deliberately mown less to encourage wildlife.”
With a reopening date in sight, the site is a lot busier, with days spent checking and updating cleaning and social distancing policies, installing posters, screens and one-way systems to keep everyone as protected as possible.
“We want to open as soon as it is safe to do so,” says Karen. “We can’t wait to see all our lovely guests again!”