THIS camping business is becoming ever more interesting. We are surrounded by people like us - and hardly any of them would have been here 20 or so years ago. Yet we all have something in common.
We are all retired.
What has happened is interesting and socially significant. It is also a transient event that may one day foster an entire ouvre of writing. Maybe I am early in; maybe not.
Here it is - out of the main holiday season the warmer parts of Europe are awash with retired people enjoying the privilege that their pensions buy them. And they are pensions that will never come again after the crash of 2008 and the reaction to it.
But we are not wealthy people with vast pension pots - we are very, very largely people who worked in public service, earning less than they may have in private business but rewarded with vastly superior pensions. Not freely, despite the 'gold-plated' slur of the Daily Flail and co. In fact I can give my own example.
I worked in British Gas as a PR Manager and was moderately well-paid at then £26,000 pa - but I had friends in private industry who reckoned I was a mug as they earned 35k and more. But we had better conditions and although we paid more for our pension so did our employer. And that is what makes it possible for so many similar people from across Europe to travel the southern areas in their retirement.
But note - my 12 years in British Gas, earning less but gaining more in pension, provides the largest part by far of my pension package. The rest is frankly a poor return for what I paid in across 30 years. But I did earn more in the private sector - I just wasted it like most people.
There is more to it, however. The tenting and caravanning of the latter half of the 20th century has given way to the motor homing of the 21st. Its not as cut and dried as that but close to it. And the motor home is an expensive bit of kit - three times the price of a caravan of similar age. But, as in my case originally, it is afforded by the cash sum paid either on retirement or redundancy. I am back in a caravan now but that's a different story.
We are surrounded by people in expensive motor homes - some older, some new but most between 30 and 50k GBP. And they spend months at a time down here in the southern half of Europe. We do it, in our caravan. This year we chose spring in France but usually it is winter in southern Spain.
And an entire business has sprung up around this phenomena. A Dutch company (huge numbers of Dutch bring their motor homes south every winter) set up a campsite network. Called ACSI, it offers a deal between the member campsites and its membership of users. They get a guaranteed exposure to thousands of potential users; we get cut-price camping out of season. They get bookings when they wouldn't; we get sites that are regularly inspected.
But that is only part of it - France in particular but also Spain and Portugal have spotted the potential for off-season business. All over are Motor Home sites - designed specifically for short stop motor homers and very basic. Water and power is about it. But that suits the travelling motor homer fine - they will choose an ACSI site for longer stops. These sites are close to town and city centres or major tourist attractions.
But we shall be a dying breed I suggest. The new world does not provide pensions like that. Employment is no longer even vaguely that secure. Companies do not provide anything like the support that we got. And when redundancy or early retirement comes today there is unlikely to be much of a cash pot to fund a posh motor home.
So if I am right the next few years will be a good time to sell off any shares you have in the motor home, caravan or camping business. For it is entirely possible that these busy camp sites will be weed covered deserts within a decade or two.
Sad really since it demonstrates just how devalued labour is in our modern wonderland.
