Things to do in Devon when you're dead (Haven Holidays in general)

Member Name: michaird

Product:	Haven Holidays in general
Date:	22/09/02 (2123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great hols

Disadvantages: Very Hilly, Expensive down south!

Not for me the hot exotic holidays of the rich and famous, no jet setting off to foreign lands this year (if you can jet set from Birmingham airport). This year I'm going to Torquay and because I don't really like hotels, I'm staying at the Haven holiday camp.

Booking and bumf
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Before you book you need to get hold of a brochure. You can order one from their website www.havenholidays.co.uk or by calling them on 0870 242 2222.

The brochure gives a good run down of the entertainment and facilities offered by all parks and a general idea of what each individual park offers. There's a general lack of visual information on each of the parks themselves and of the accommodation on offer, this made me a little bit suspicious of what they might actually be like, I've heard horror stories about these holiday parks being like prison camps.

I turned to the website in the hope that it would give me a little more information but, alas, it was simply a rehash of the brochure.

The pricing policy is, however, very clear in the brochure whereas there is almost no pricing information on the website until you are actually halfway through the booking process.

You can book your holiday by ringing the number above or you can book online. I got a fabulous discount of, wait for it, five pounds! When I booked online. The online booking system is very simple and straightforward.

You will get a booking confirmation in the post and if you have paid in full it will have your checking in voucher and instructions on how to find the Holiday Park. I was most impressed by the paperwork they sent, simple and easy.

Getting there and getting in
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Basically I chose it because Torquay is practically at the bottom of the M5, very easy to get to from Birmingham. A straight run from Brum through Bristol (A stop of in Bristol service station, nice view of the docks).


The ins
tructions on the booking form sent by Haven were accurate and they did get us there, although they started a fair few miles from the end of the motorway and even a fair way away from the main A road that you would take to get to where the directions begin.

So a lack of depth in the directions given by Haven may lead to a few lost souls, I narrowly avoided this fate and spared many people the rather amusing view of a bike rack on the back of a Nissan Micra.

Booking in starts at 4pm and we arrived at 3.30pm. This didn't seem to be a problem and we were given our key straight away. Had we arrived a 3pm I think we may have had to wait, you are welcome to use the park facilities while you wait though.

Now to rest my weary head
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We had booked bronze accommodation, the cheapest, and were expecting simple, comfortable lodgings. We were also expecting to be stuck right out of the way in the deepest darkest depths of the park, where the cheapest caravans usually are.

We were then pleasantly surprised to find that we were stationed right at the top of the park (no steep hills to climb) within a few hundred yards of the main park facilities and we also seem to have been upgraded to a silver caravan.

The caravan was a good size with comfortable seats and (shock horror) a comfy bed. We had taken our own pillows as you usually get those nasty little bits of foam, but the pillows they supplied were actually quite good (only one each though) we were also given two summer quilts.

There was a good sized cooker, which worked quite well, the brochure said there was a microwave but I couldn't find it (although we didn't really care). There was a decent kettle and ample plates, cutlery and cooking equipment.

There was a timed central heating system for the bedrooms, found on the last night! A gas fire in the main room that heated up very nicely. The full fl
ushin
g toilet was a great
relief (gone
are the days of the chemical bucket) and a rather good shower room. The bathroom was nice except for the fact that it was a weird flesh colour that made me feel like I was showering inside a doll's leg. The shower wasn't very high either, my boyfriend just about managed to fit inside it so if you taller than 6ft 4" be prepared to stoop a little.

Although the van was more than big enough for the two of us it did, technically, sleep six. I have serious doubts that a family of six would come out alive after spending a week in there; people tend to make spaces so much smaller.

My main gripe on the accommodation front is the fact that not all vans have parking spaces next to them. I had to park my car about 150 yards away in a car park.

Haven do provide caravans with access for people in wheelchairs (the one we stayed certainly wasn't suitable) I didn't see any on this site although I did note a couple of guests in wheelchairs. I would have thought these vans would have been stationed at the top of the park where we were as the site is very, very hilly and very steep.

Things to see and do
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Well, the people at Haven would certainly prefer it if you didn't leave the park at all during your stay. In order to achieve this aim they attempt to provide a wide array of activities for all the family.

The heated indoor swimming pool was small but big enough to get a decent swim out of it. There were lockers along the side for your belongings, a paddling area for smaller children, a Jacuzzi area for those post swim arm aches and a water slide for my fella. There were two lifeguards on duty at all times and they also held a few pool activities (snorkelling lessons for example)

The site shop sold most everyday items such a groceries and newspapers. As expected it was a little more expensive than we were used to but, as ev
erything i
s more expensive down south, we got over it

There was a small amusement arcade with machines so that you can simply feed you notes into and change will be spat out for the kids to feed your money to the games machines. I am a self confessed 2p pusher-offer machine addict and will readily admit to spending far too much time in the arcade.

A rather impressive adventure playground is overlooked by the bayview bar and servery (note not restaurant or café, it's a servery!) were you can watch the kids play from the comfort of a bench with a pint. We ate in the servery once, which reminded me of a cross between a working mans club and a transport café. The food was pretty good and not bad value.

You can play tennis for a deposit of £10 (you get this back) although we found that the court sloped a little bit. There's a mini golf area that you can play for a refundable deposit of £1 we didn't bother with this.

The Broadway club is the main entertainment venue, it has ample seating and a fair sized bar, tucked in the corner is a takeaway kiosk serving McDonalds style value (hah!) meals for between £3.99 and £4.99. There is also a Rory the tiger merchandise shop, which is open until around 11pm at night, so if your kids want you to buy them something it'll never be too late (aren't you just so happy about that?). The bar seems to stay open until people don't want to drink anymore, in practice it think it closes around 1-2am.

Clubs for children aged from five years old right up to seventeen are run during the day. You may think that a seventeen-year-old may not be all that interested in this but I did notice that activities included PS2 challenge and a DJing course so you may be surprised.

God good, get me out of here!
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The entertainment is, understandably, aimed at the young family. It has strong leanings towards audience participation, especially f
or the children
. Not being a young family seeing a giant tiger miming, in an American accent, bad Havenesque songs did not fill me with pleasure. The younger children did seem to enjoy it though. For the most part we stayed away from the early evening entertainment preferring instead to go to Torquay town centre or little places in the countryside.

There was cabaret entertainment aimed at the adults after 10pm(ish) We usually caught these acts and was quite impressed by the high quality. There was a young singer doing Frank Sinatra & Robbie Williams type songs (and a few rather good singing impressions) at male group singing mostly old mowtown favourites (they were very good) and a woman that did a variety old and new tracks (not as good as the others)

Bingo, talent contests (irony at its best here) and discos were all co-ordinated by the very entertaining reps (including one which looked scarily like Grace Jones, despite being a bloke)

More than my job's worth mate
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Havens customer services is excellent, the reception staff are very friendly and happy to help with any enquiry and they do not make it seem as if it's a great chore. I had the unfortunate experience of smashing my back windscreen and the maintenance manager gave us tape and plastic to keep out the weather and offered to ask the manager to let us park in his private garage over night.

In fact pretty much everyone we met down there was just so damn nice, taxi drivers, shop people, bar workers, the man that came to fix my windscreen. Surprising almost all of them were originally from the midlands. They all said how it was lovely down there if a little laid back and expensive. In fact, when we asked one taxi driver if he had a house down there he said "Do I f**k!" (You can buy a three-bedroom house in nice area in Birmingham for the price of a flat down there)

Where the hell am I?
*************
***

The bro
chure did say
the park was three miles f
rom Torquay town centre, what they didn't say was it was three miles up! It isn't half-hilly around there.

A taxi ride into Torquay town centre cost around £7.80 (gulp!) and a return bus trip £2.50, although buses from the park stop at 4.30pm

Torquay town centre is quite lively with many bars, restaurants and a few nightclubs. The shopping is excellent, nice and relaxing too, which is a big change from the mad bustle of Birmingham city centre (I found a Primark, I am so impressed I wish we had one up here, it's SO cheap!).

At night however there do seem to be a lot of drunks, scruffy mac and brown paper bag type. Some of them were quite aggressive and once we had just walked through a group of them before a huge violent fight broke out among them (I heard the word stab!) As someone who comes from a large city with quite a pronounced problem with beggars I must say I felt more threatened at times down there than I ever have at home.

There are few nice little pubs hiding in country lanes (I recommend the Linney Inn) you would get so lost if you tried to find them yourself so I would suggest a taxi on this one.

Other things to do include Paignton Zoo, Babacombe model village and Quaywest water park. There is a wealth of information on local activities in the park reception and if you fancy travelling a little further you're not too far away from the Eden project.

And your point is?
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Overall we had a good holiday in comfortable surroundings with great people and plenty to do. You can't really ask for more. We would definitely book with haven again, through not to the same park as I never go to the same place twice.

Summary: