One of the joys of caravan holidays is that you can set up camp pretty comfortably and enjoy your chosen pitch for the duration of your stay. Once it’s done it can really feel like your own home from home. It’s well worth putting up an awning so that you can relax, come rain or shine, with plenty of light coming in through the awning windows and doors. Best of all, when the weather’s fine, it’s time for sunbathing, outdoor dining, drinks by the barbecue and gazing at sunsets and stars.

But there’s often a bit of a chilly breeze whistling through your hair as you step outside the caravan and awning. How do you deal with that? Well, plenty of people enjoy putting a windbreak – or several – around the entrance to the caravan and awning. This marks out your pitch, offering privacy and shelter while you are outside. It also makes an excellent fence to keep your dogs and small children safe and deter them from wandering off and getting lost.

At Practical Caravan we’ve tested plenty of windbreaks to see which are the best camping accessories to buy.

We’ve given the highest star-ratings to windbreaks that are good value for money, well made, strong and stable in the wind. The more guy ropes per pole, the better, we found. We also looked at the practicalities of packing them away inside the caravan for the journey. We considered whether the windbreaks could be attached to awnings or even the caravan. We were less pleased with any windbreaks that seemed to start at ankle height rather than fitting closely to the ground. Windbreaks with gaps seemed to us to be missing the point. 

There are many modern styles of windbreaks for sale in the UK and they tend to be made by the same companies who supply lightweight backpacking tents and other outdoor gear. Among the cheap windbreaks we’ve tried are the Gelert Breeze Blocker, at £24.99, Easy Camp Surf, at £19.99, Olpro Picket Fence Windbreak, at £29.99, SunnCamp Windjammer, costing £29.99, Halfords Urban Escape Camping, at £20 and the Vango Adventure Windbreak, priced at £24.99. 

If you’re prepared to pay more than £30, there are even more windbreaks to choose from. We tested the Trespass Windbreak, at £33.99, the Coleman Windshield XL, priced at £49.99, the Kampa Break, costing £39.99 and the Quest 7 Pole Family Windbreak at £49.99.

We also tested some expensive windbreaks, such as the Vango 5 Pole Windbreak, which costs £64.99, the Kampa Deluxe Windbreak, at £89.98, and the most expensive of the lot, the Quest Windshield Pro, priced at £104.99.

You could buy four or five cheap windbreaks for the same price as the most expensive one on test. So, we wondered, is it worth paying more for your windbreaks?   

The Kampa Deluxe Windbreak costs £89.98, which is expensive for a 4.5m-long x 1.35m-high windbreak, but this is no ordinary model.

Stability is improved by top crossbars that interlink into the poles, plus ground plates that have a locating spike that fits inside the pole. Two hefty plastic pegs anchor the plates down. The material is pegged to the ground using pull straps, which allows the windbreak to be tensioned super-taut.

Better instructions would have been a bonus, though.