Ian Button and his wife Tracey manage Pitton Cross Caravan & Camping Park, a long-established family business. Ian is also Chair to Rhossili Community Council and a member of the Board of Governors at Knelston Primary School. In his spare time (!) he enjoys taking aerial photographs with his drone. Ian spoke to me via Zoom about life running the family business.
Thanks for talking to me today Ian. Tell me a little about the history of the site – when did it start, how did it grow?
We’ve been on the site for at least 300 years and the site started in the mid-60s, early 70s. We were just small camping site and we have photos of caravans from around that time. Then in 1975, we had a Church group come from Aldridge in the West Midlands who’d been staying with Tucker’s, just down the road from us. They were looking for a different site and they’ve been staying with us as a group of about 100 teenagers ever since! Then over the years, as more people came camping things improved.
1980 was a big turnaround when we built a new toilet block and that kind of cemented us here really. One the of the biggest issues in the past had been getting planning permission from Swansea Council to allow us to be open and after a lot of hard work, my grandmother finally got us permission to be open and we’re very lucky to have a licence that allows us to be open all year. There are very few campsites on Gower that are allowed to be open all year.
So, when did you take over?
I’d been working with Surrey County Council and Tracey had been working as a dental nurse in Surrey and we moved back 17-18 years ago. My father [Roger Button] was looking to retire and we came back to help him run the park then. We took on the mantle of running it, along with my father and it was a gradual transition. Over the last 4-5 years, with Covid and technology changing – computer-based office stuff, we’ve done more and more and my dad has done less and less over time. We’ve been using an online booking system for over 6 years now.
What team do you have now then?
Well, really there’s me and Tracey, Sharon who does maintenance (she’s been with us for at least 14 years), a member of staff moved on this year who’d been with us for 13 years, then Georgie started with us this year and she will be with us until at least April next year, helping out in the office. So it’s only a very small team and we have maybe two extra people in the summer.
Tell me about the site now – how many pitches have you got and what sorts are they?
For many, many years, the site was 100 pitches on our site licence for the main campsite and we rented a field from my dad’s sisters for about 30-40 years but then recently when they sold the farm, that field was no longer available to rent so we bought land off them. Then, after waiting 6 months for planning permission from Swansea Council (and a year’s lost revenue) we’ve got another field now. We put 20 units in and we leave the rest of the field to long wild grass so it feels a little like wild camping or back to nature camping. So 120 pitches really in the middle of the summer.
What sort of pitches are they? Are they all for caravans?
It’s a mixture. We’ve got 27 hard-standing pitches with gravel, for people to park on – inevitably it gets a bit wet in the winter because we’re open all year. Then it’s a mixture of non-electric pitches with no power and ones with power.
It’s obviously a very popular site, to have the same people coming back year after year, you’re obviously doing something right. What do you offer that you think makes it so successful?
People come to us because we haven’t got a clubhouse, because it’s quiet. They come to us for the dark skies. Pitton Cross is the darkest spot on Gower – it’s been measured for the Dark Skies status. They just come because we’re rural, away from everything. People like it because it’s very relaxed, there’s no stress, we’ve got lots of wildlife areas, we’ve got the reservoir with all the wild birds. People just come because they can get away from it all really.
If there is such a thing as a typical working day for you, what does that actually involve?
A typical day is mainly in July and August, when it’s getting up, opening the shop, doing site maintenance in the morning, make sure the grass is mowed. Then in the afternoon, we’ve got all our arrivals, which on a Friday can be 60 arrivals between 3 o’clock in the afternoon and 11 o’clock at night. We get them all checked in, take them to their pitches. That tends to be typical in the summer, keeping an eye on the shop, doing the ordering, and just keeping an eye on all the guests, and making sure the site is running correctly.
How long is the day then? When does the shop open and when do you finish up?
In the summer, we normally open the shop from 8.30am to 7pm, so you’re there from 8am to get any milk in, get the till sorted, check the coffee machine. This year has been very different though and we’ve closed the shop at 5 o’clock every day just because it’s been so quiet. There’s not been so many people about this year, I’m not sure why. But usually we can be there until 9 or 10 o’ clock at night, so the summer can be very long days. In the winter then, it can be very quiet, like today [early October] it’s very quiet and you can get little jobs done.
It’s always fun, dealing with the public. Things can go wrong. What sort of things make you tear your hair out?
Just people not listening really. When you try to help people and give them advice when you’ve done the job for 17 years, with your experience you try to explain how not to do something. They think their way is the correct way and when they get stuck on the grass after you’ve told them not to drive on it, even with their 4-wheel drive. Or when they try to electrocute themselves, using indoor plugs outside! I think the hardest one this year thought has been people keeping dogs on leads. On the campsite, we don’t have any livestock, but there’s lots of wildlife and people think because there’s no sheep or no cows, they can just let their dogs roam wild. They forget there’s other wildlife around, like birds nesting that they can’t see, or other animals. So that’s the reason for dogs having to be on leads. And not everyone likes dogs. That’s been our hardest bugbear this year – people thinking their dog is wonderful but not being considerate to other people on the campsite.
Have you got any funny stories? What’s the funniest or strangest thing that’s ever happened?
Um, I don’t know really. Last year, we had a massive wasp invasion in the toilet block. Someone came knocking on our door at 6 o’clock in the morning telling us there were a few wasps in the ladies toilets. We went in with fly killer and had a dustbin full of wasps. That was a bit strange, not something we’d had to deal with before.
But generally, most things are good, most people are good. We get people arriving a month early for their holiday and things like that, or arriving on the wrong day. We’re very lucky with our guests. The funny things tend to be more annoying things with people doing silly things. The other week, somebody drove with the steps of their caravan and dragged it half way around the site under their car. There’s always something new, something you don’t expect. You just wonder why people do things, like booking a tent pitch for a motorhome and then wondering why they get turned away. Realising they can’t put their motorhome on the grass and they thought it would be alright. The other week we had to go and speak to someone at 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s things like that – afterwards they’re funny, but at the time, it’s very frustrating.
What are you most proud of?
I think it’s when people come into the shop on the campsite and they say it’s the best shop they’ve ever been in. That always make us proud. And it’s not one or two people. We had Coast & Country here the other day. They were filming and they were looking around the shop and saying it was really good. And all the work we’ve done with the wildlife planting and the woodland – the trees and the reservoir and people impressed at how it feels so wild. Twenty years ago people would say, the campsite is unkept, you haven’t mowed it and now, people see the other side, that actually it’s for the benefit of the wildlife and that’s why it’s done that way. People are really appreciating that now. And that makes us proud, when people come here and say, we really like your site, the way you keep it is really nice.
And you’ve won quite a few awards haven’t you?
We’ve won Highly Commended for the Welsh Hospitality Awards, we always do very well with the AA for our grading, so we’re always very pleased. We score 4 out of 5 on Google and we always do well on Trip Advisor.
We used to have a Review book on the campsite, but we found that if the weather was rubbish, the reviews were rubbish and if the weather was good, the reviews were amazing! in the end we had to take it out because the reviews were dependant on the weather and that doesn’t help sometimes. Generally, people really enjoy it though.
What aspect of your job gives you the most pleasure?
I think it’s meeting customers really. And you know, they’ve driven 6 hours to get to us for their holiday and that’s always a good sign that they’ve taken the time and effort to come to us. Especially when you get travellers from Switzerland or Spain or Italy, Norway, and they’ve driven all that way and they’ve picked our caravan park. That’s always quite pleasing, of all the places in the UK, they’ve come to us. Even if they haven’t booked, you know, if they’ve come from Italy say, we can’t always do it, but we will always try and fit them in if we can.
And it’s just nice in the winter, when you walk around the site when it’s quiet and you can see all the work you’ve done, see all the trees growing and the wildlife, that makes us quite pleased.
Any particular message for the people reading this that you’d like to say to end on?
I think that it’s always good being part of the village and it’s just nice when we get villagers come in and use our shop really, coming in to buy greetings cards or Christmas gifts or birthday gifts or, we do the recycling bags and they come up to pick the bags up. It’s nice when villagers pop in to see us.
Thank you, Ian Button
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