Run a CL or CS site on your own smallholding and sooner or later you'll want a week away: a hospital appointment, a family wedding, or just a proper holiday of your own. The trouble is your site doesn't stop needing attention just because you do. Guests are still arriving, the awning field still needs mowing, and someone has to be reachable if a hook up trips or a car won't start on the gate. This is where site sitting comes in: getting someone trustworthy to run your pitches while you're off site, so guests keep arriving and nothing falls over in your absence. It's a well-worn arrangement among CL and CS owners, but very few people explain how to actually set one up properly.

What site sitting actually means

Site sitting is simply having someone stand in for you as the person on the ground, checking guests in, taking payments, answering questions and generally keeping an eye on things, while you're away from your CL or CS. It isn't the same as locking the gate and hoping nobody turns up. Both the Caravan and Motorhome Club and the Camping and Caravanning Club expect a Certificated Location or Certificated Site to have someone available, even if that person isn't you personally. A CL or CS that simply goes dark for a fortnight risks turning away bookings, or worse, leaving a guest stuck on your gravel drive with no hook up and no one to ask.

For most small sites, site sitting is an informal arrangement rather than anything run through the club itself. You ask someone you trust, hand them the keys and a short brief, and they cover reception duties in your place for however many days you're gone.

Why even a five pitch site needs cover

It's tempting to think a five-pitch CL or CS is small enough to just close for a week. Sometimes that's the right call, especially in the quieter shoulder months. But if you've got bookings already confirmed, cancelling on guests who've planned a trip around your site isn't a great look, and it costs you the income too. Even outside of paying guests, an unattended site still has jobs that don't pause: bins need emptying, the chemical disposal point needs checking, and if you're on a well or septic system there's always a chance something needs a look. A short absence with no cover at all is fine occasionally. A regular pattern of it starts to show up in reviews, and in how quickly your pitches fill.

Where to find a site sitter

Ask around your own club

Both major clubs have long-standing informal networks of site owners who cover for each other. Ask in your local CL or CS Facebook group, or through your club's regional contacts, and you'll often find another owner nearby happy to help in exchange for the same favour later in the year. It helps that another site owner already knows the routine: taking a booking, running a card machine, checking a membership number, so there's very little training involved.

Swap with a neighbouring site

If there's another small site within a reasonable drive, a straight swap works well. You cover their site for a week in spring, they cover yours in summer. Neither of you is out of pocket, and you both get a proper break at a time that suits your own season.

Family, friends and paid sitters

Plenty of owners simply ask a retired parent, a neighbour or a grown-up child to take over the basics for a few days. It doesn't need to be a fellow campsite owner if the person is sensible, reachable by phone, and willing to follow a short written brief. A small but growing number of sites also use paid house and site sitting services, generally aimed at smallholdings and rural properties, who'll live in for the duration and take care of animals, deliveries and visitors as part of the same booking.

What to pay a site sitter

There's no fixed going rate, and most arrangements between fellow site owners involve no cash at all, just the goodwill of returning the favour later. Common arrangements include:

Whichever you choose, agree it before they arrive rather than after. It avoids an awkward conversation on your return, and it means your sitter knows exactly what they're taking on.

The handover: what your sitter actually needs

A good handover takes less than an hour and saves a week of phone calls while you're away. At minimum, give your sitter:

Write it down rather than relying on memory. Even the most capable sitter will forget half a verbal brief by day three, and a short printed sheet pinned by the kettle answers most questions before they need to ring you.

Keeping bookings and payments running from your phone

The single biggest change to site sitting over the last few years is that it no longer has to mean handing over a paper diary and hoping for the best. If your bookings live in a proper campsite booking diary rather than an exercise book, your sitter can see exactly who's arriving each day from their own phone, without needing to ring you to check. With CampSuite's bookings, you can give a sitter their own login with limited access, so they can check guests in, take a payment and add a note, without being able to see your accounts or change your settings. And because it's all in the cloud, you can still glance at your diary from a beach in Cornwall if something needs your eye, without it being your problem to solve.

Taking card payments through the same system means your sitter isn't stuck juggling a separate card machine and a paper receipt book either. Everything lands in one place, so when you're back you're not spending your first evening home trying to reconcile a week of scribbled notes.

A simple pre-departure checklist

Before you head off, run through this:

The takeaway

Site sitting isn't complicated, but it only works smoothly if you plan it properly rather than a hurried phone call the night before you leave. Find someone you trust, agree what they're getting out of it, hand over a short written brief, and give them a way to see your bookings without needing to ring you every hour. Do that once and it becomes a pattern you can repeat every time you need a break, rather than a reason to never take one. If you'd like your bookings, payments and guest messages somewhere a sitter can access from their own phone while you're away, CampSuite is free to get started and takes about fifteen minutes to set up.