Footwear deserves more thought than it usually gets. Bring proper walking shoes or trainers for dunes, coastal paths and pebble beaches, sandals for round the caravan and the pool if your park has one, and something you don't mind getting wet for rockpooling or a paddle. Flip-flops alone rarely survive a full week of coastal walking.

Ask about on-site facilities' actual opening hours and whether anything's seasonal. A pool that's only open during summer months, or a clubhouse with restricted evening hours outside peak season, changes what a break looks like considerably if you're travelling in spring or autumn.

A static caravan Tingdene Holiday Parks Limited gives you a proper living area, a kitchen and usually two or three bedrooms, so it works well for families or groups who want room to spread out rather than one hotel room shared between everyone. Mornings tend to be more relaxed, you can make breakfast in your own time, let the kids potter about in pyjamas a bit longer, and plan your day without waiting on a restaurant sitting. Evenings work the same way. If you've had a full day out, cooking something simple and settling in with the caravan's own living space beats getting everyone dressed again for a dining room.

Outside school holidays and bank holidays, the picture eases considerably. A standard week in term time, particularly midweek, tends to have availability much closer to your travel date, sometimes within a few weeks rather than months. This is where flexibility on short breaks and midweek arrival really pays off, since demand simply isn't competing for the same handful of weeks.

A hotel stay suits a different kind of trip. If you want your meals cooked and cleared away without any thought, and you'd rather not do any washing up on holiday at all, that's a fair trade for a smaller room. Hotels also tend to sit centrally in towns and cities, so if your break is built around walking to restaurants, shops and evening entertainment on foot, that convenience counts for a lot.

On arrival, you'll usually collect keys from reception or a check-in point, where someone can point you towards your caravan, talk you through anything specific to that unit, and flag opening times for the pool, clubhouse or shop if the park has them. It's worth asking any questions at this point, staff on site tend to be used to first-time guests and are generally happy to run through anything that isn't obvious.