Carlo O.
2/5
I chose this park for a weekend getaway in December, due to the stunning position on the coast, and the beauty of the 2 bed caravan homes at a reasonable price. I was told to check in by 9pm on the day of arrival.
On the day (cold, windy and rainy), we arrived at 8.45 pm and were quickly and informally checked in via the bar. Upon arriving at the caravan, we noticed that while the home itself was clean and ready, the heating system had been left switched off, 8°C inside the home, not ideal at 9pm with a 3 year old in our company, ready to sleep. No easy way to find out how to switch it on either, we thought we would find a thermostat somewhere to set up chosen temperature, but no such thing.
Upon explaining the issue back at the bar, I was told heating instructions should be available in the caravan (yet, as confirmed later, there weren't any). Nonetheless, upon insisting that there was no clear way for me to know how to switch on the heating, I was told a technician would come to help. The technician quickly came, and showed us the heating is controlled via the gas boiler hidden in a wall cabinet in one the bathrooms, via a clock thermostat on the boiler itself. The heating took a couple of hours to take the caravan to a decent temperature, and was left on throughout the duration of our 2-day stay, - we were later told someone forgot to switch it on prior to our arrival.
The first night however, heating would no longer be the issue. With heavy winds sweeping the area, one of the park's maintenance car left incorrectly parked right opposite our caravan saw its intruder alarm get set off by winds throughout the night. On top of that, extraction fan flaps from kitchen and bathroom piping outlets kept ticking and banging loudly against their frames at all times. By the morning, we were knackered. The staff who came to pick up the car simply suggested to complain at reception (but they were the one who left the car unchecked the whole night). We mentioned all issues to staff, only to be told they would look into the caravan later as their maintenance team were working on several issues (with an occupancy rate of perhaps 5%, I would have prioritised customers to anything else?).
By the second evening, the flaps issue was still there, reception closed. I had to call their mobile out-of-hours number and finally a young staffer, Harriet, came to help. On my advice, she taped the exhaust flaps from the bathroom temporarily, allowing us to have a decent sleep the second night. She was the only employee who was kind, helpful and who took actual notice of the issues. She saved the day and made the rest of our stay OK.
The holiday park itself, if it weren't for the abysmal customer service, is very much worth a visit, given its perfect location and comfortable caravans. One downside is that while there is plenty of electricity connections around the area (about 300 caravans with 5kW+ connections each), there is not one single EV charging point in the entire structure, not even at the entrance parking lot (yet, each caravan could easily provide one). It would be exceedingly easy to install even a small number of slow chargers for EV customers by the entrance if they cared (there were two electric cars during our stay, out of a dozen, plus one electric van from the holiday park itself).
All in all, a place to visit, if you manage to not have any issues that require to be actioned by their staff. Leaving a home cold by check-in time in the winter is however completely unacceptable. No offer was made to discount or partially refund our stay in the face of the issues we encountered, nor a formal apology.
