Adult-only Gloucestershire campsite taking steps to be more eco-friendly

Ideal for visiting Cheltenham, Gloucester and the Cotswolds, Briarfields Motel & Touring Park is an adult-only campsite with the environment at the forefront of the minds of owners, Scott and Jo.

Recently they have made improvements and changes to the touring park in a move to become a more sustainable park and, in particular, to move away from the use of fossil fuels.

Scott says, "We specifically create wild areas which are great for the five bee hives in our orchard, along with feeding the birds and providing nesting materials. We allow our hedges to grow thick, which again is great cover for nesting birds."

This is not the only work that has taken place. They have built hog houses for hedgehogs, bug hotels and butterfly houses, along with numerous nesting boxes for birds and bats. When constructing the site's new fully serviced pitches they changed their lighting to low level LEDs and all electric usage is 10 amps.

Scott continued, "We’ve always had in mind our oil, petrol and diesel usage. Four years ago we swapped our petrol maintenance machinery. We invested in battery technology from the Ego Power Plus brand. One year ago we bought our first Ego battery hand push mower. We have now replaced all our diesel vehicles with electric alternatives. Last month saw the final piece of this particular jigsaw, when we took delivery of our electric ride on mower."

But charging batteries isn’t without its emissions. So Scott and Jo always consider just when they actually charge their batteries. This is usually done during the small hours of the night when demand in the UK is as low as it can be. Often at those times most of the site's electric is being produced by wind turbines.

"We have an app called Co2 Grid Carbon, which tells us exactly how our energy is being produced at any one time and we use this as a guide to charge our batteries. This is just the start but by no means the end of the story. We have big plans moving forward... electric vehicle charging points, solar panels to offset our electric usage, air source heat pumps for our hot water," added Scott.

For more information about Briarfields Motel & Touring Park, see their full listing on our website.