Beck and call (From The Northern Echo)

Beck and call

10:22am Saturday 21st February 2009

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The plummeting pound is making buying a holiday home in the UK is a lot more attractive.

Dave Horsley visits a hidden gem of a holiday park on the western slopes of the Pennines.

AUGILL Beck is a curiously different sort of holiday park. It’s small, quiet, tucked away in a pretty wooded valley, with the beck that gives it its name bubbling along its length.

The A66 – the principal trans-Pennine route – is so close by, you could almost imagine Augill Beck being the sort of hideaway a sophisticated gang might choose after a bank job, so they could make a speedy getaway if needed.

The downside for the robbers is that it’s so close to the A66, Augill Beck has its own signpost, making it one of the easiest to find and most accessible sites anywhere in Britain.

More to the point for non-criminals like you and I, this also means Augill Beck is just a few minutes away from some of this country’s most dramatic natural scenery and tourist attractions.

The park, where holiday homes can be hired or bought, is overlooked by a sweeping range of fells at the western foot of the Pennines and the wonderfully named Lune Forest.

The Pennine Way, and the Selset, Balderhead and Grassholme reservoirs, are only a short drive away.

Only slightly further away are the northern fringes of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the eastern edges of the Lake District. To reach either from Augill Beck would probably not even register on the petrol gauge.

Kendal Caravans acquired the park last year and it is one of four owned by the Lakes-based company.

The others are Village Green, at Edmundbyers, in County Durham; Robin Hood, at Bassenthwaite, near Keswick; and Seacroft, at Newbiggin, near Ulverston, on the southern tip of the Lake District.

Augill Beck is about a mile-and-ahalf from the village of Brough, once a fume-choked bottleneck when the east-west traffic flow passed through in the days before the A66 was upgraded.

Today, few people pass through Brough without reason to be there. During spring and summer, visitors to Augill Beck make frequent use of its pub – the Golden Fleece – shop and its excellent chippie for most of their needs.

Kirkby Stephen, a bustling market town and Brough’s closest, larger and more illustrious neighbour, still has a busy highway running through its heart – the A685 – but offers an intriguing array of shops, pubs and buildings of historical interest, squeezed into narrow and twisting passageways.

Almost equidistant, the ancient market town and royal borough of Appleby stands at the heart of the Eden Valley and is similarly blessed with a fine assembly of cafes, pubs, shops and an excellent tourist information centre.

AUGILL Beck has both two and three-bedroom lodges for hire at weekly rates ranging from £274 to £326 in low season and to £531 to £631 high. The Elms, our home for a low-season week away from the routine of home and work, had two bedrooms, one with a double bed, the other twins. The central heating system, an essential during the cold winter we’ve been experiencing, worked quickly and kept us snug and warm, and there was extra comfort from an electric “flame effect” fire.

The kitchen and living area were both well equipped and comfortable to use, the former with such extras as a microwave, the latter with a TV offering the basic Sky package and a DVD player.

With the weak pound ruling out a foreign holiday for many people this year, parks such as Augill Beck suddenly have a new group of admirers: those of us thinking our money might be better spent on a holiday home that we can use over and over again.

Kendal Caravans offer a range of static caravans, with new models ranging in price from £23,500 to nearly £50,000, as well as a big selection of nearly new models.

Augill Beck is open from March 1 to January 31 and, once the holiday home is bought, the fees for this year are £1,650, including VAT and rates.

The fully-serviced pitches all come with a piped, metered gas supply and direct TV connection.

All in all, the park is a delightful little tree-lined bolthole in the countryside, but what makes it a real hidden gem is as a base to access the Eden Valley, the Pennines, the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District and the many other wonders of Cumbria.

That’s what I call nature on your doorstep.

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