maybee said:
norden farm near corfe castle nice
We stayed there for the first time last year.
After a night down the pub we got back and sheltered in the awning from the torrential rain outside for a few post pub bevvies. It must have been about 12.30-1am when there was a massive flash and deafening explosion like nothing I've heard before. The dog was straight out under the awning leaving me and my mate Matt chasing a greyhound around the campsite in the pouring rain (it turns out he's faster then me; the greyhound that is, not Matt).
Initially we couldn't explain it as we couldn't see anything untoward which given the proximity of the explosion sounds unbelievable, but it took a few minutes for the fire to take hold and for it to become clear to everyone in the area what had happened. It transpired that a lightening strike had hit a tree about 100 meters away from us which had then arced to the gas bottles of a static caravan used as an office which given the time of night was luckily unoccupied. However there was a towable caravan directly next to it in which one of the staff were sleeping which was taken by the pursuing flames, fortunately the girl in there seemed unharmed although was understandably very shaken.
There were 3 fire engines + two fire control cars on the site to put the canopy of the trees out as well as what remained of the two caravans.
Here's a bit about it in the local paper
We returned to our beers in the awning to stay out the way which seemed like an odd thing to do even to us at the time but we couldn't help with anything and we didn't want to stand around gawping at someone elses misfortune like it was macabre entertainment, a lot of people did. Needless to say it all felt a bit weird but we were definitely far too awake at that point to go to bed and it was a good 2 hours before any feeling of peace settled upon the night again anyhow.
All in all a very memorable night in the van in the most surreal of circumstances.
Despite our freak of nature experience I would recommend it as the site is close to Corfe and a pretty chilled out site, plus it's a great base for the surrounding area.