On the budget side, self-catering works in your favour with a bigger group. Cooking most meals in the caravan rather than eating out as a party of eight or ten keeps costs sensible, and splitting the shopping and cooking between the adults spreads both the effort and the spend. A shared static caravan holiday, or two units booked close together, usually works out considerably more cost-effective than the equivalent number of hotel rooms plus regular restaurant bills.

A static caravan is bigger inside than most people expect from the outside. Most units have a separate living area with a sofa and television, a kitchen with a cooker, fridge and the basics you'd find in a small kitchen at home, and two or three bedrooms depending on the size you've booked. It's closer to a small, self-contained holiday cottage than anything resembling camping.

The key decision is how you split everyone across accommodation. Larger static caravans, often three-bedroom units, can comfortably sleep a wider family group under one roof, which suits families who want everyone together for meals and evenings but still want separate bedrooms for a good night's sleep. If the group is bigger still, booking two adjoining or nearby units, one for grandparents and one for the rest of the family, gives everyone their own space to retreat to while keeping you close enough to wander over for a cup of tea or to hand over the children for an hour.

Bank holiday weekends behave the same way on a smaller scale. Even outside the main school holidays, a bank holiday weekend pulls in extra demand because it gives everyone an extra day off without using annual leave, so these particular weekends fill up faster than an ordinary one either side of them.

If the park has a clubhouse, pool or entertainment programme, www.tingdeneholidayparks.com these are usually optional rather than something you're expected to take part in every evening. Plenty of guests use a park purely as a comfortable, well-equipped base and spend most of their time out and about along the coast or countryside nearby, coming back only to sleep, cook and relax.

A spontaneous short break is entirely possible with a UK holiday park, you just need to know where the flexibility usually sits.