John Fowler Holidays, Cornwall

We went to John Fowler, Illfracombe holiday park during August 2008 and paid over £850 for a week in their "Royal Gold Bungalow" accommodation. We booked after looking at their holiday brochure - what an absolute waste of money and i would not recommend this "park" to anyone, i came away feeling i had been taken for a fool for parting with £850 to stay on this so called holiday park.
1. When you book a holiday for your family and you are paying for the "top" accommodation available on the holiday park, you have certain expectations about the type of holiday you can expect and the JFH brochure makes a good job of confirming those expectation - until you get to the holiday park and the reality of the situation very quickly kicks in and you find you are on the worst, most child unfriendly holiday park ever.

There is one very big problem with JFH Illfracombe , It is not a holiday park - it is a housing estate with a basic swimming pool and entertainment room attached to it.
A lot of the accommodation blocks are recent additions, this park is a cross between a Germany council housing estate and the chicken sheds from the film "chicken run". There are single storey and three storey accommodation blocks. A lot of the accommodation blocks are recent additions, and the majority of the single storey blocks are from the 1960's and they look awful from the outside.

The accommodation blocks are so tightly packed onto this "park" the only way you can get around the "park" is by using the concrete walk ways and stairs between the blocks.

Our accommodation block was a newish single storey block at the back of the "park", It became obvious its location was determined by the amount of land they had left to build on. Our scenic view was of the doors and windows of a three storey accommodation block not more than 5 metres from our front door, which was separated by a steep embankment on the other side of the concrete pathway that ran directly outside our front door.
Not being impressed with the location of our so called top of the range accommodation I went to the reception to see if there was something they could do as i assumed we must be in the wrong accommodation. Unfortunately we were not - the lady on reception stated that the park is "built up" - no kidding! And they have no control over what is put in the holiday brochure - such as statements like;

"Wonderful sea views" - only the sea gulls can vouch for this statement as our view was of a three storey accommodation block not more than 5 metres from our front door.

"Big and Lively" - Just words that mean nothing.

2. On our arrival we were given the welcome pack for the park, this consisted of a piece of paper with a list of the does and don'ts on the park and lots of brochures for off-site activities - as there was very little to do on the park.
On the park list were the following little gems;

You are not allowed to fly kites on the park as there are overhead power cables. - I must have missed this bit of child safety information in the JFH brochure, or did JFH just decide not to mention it.

No ball games are allowed on the park. This was not difficult rule to adhere to as there was nowhere on the "park" to play any ball games. You would find more space inside your accommodation than you would do outside in the "park".

3. The swimming pool facilities leave a lot to be desired. There are no changing rooms - just public changing area's for women and men, the changing areas are so small only two adults or 3/4 children can get changed at any one time. To put proper changing facilities in for the swimming pool would have required JFH to use land they have built an accommodation block on. Obviously cramming more bodies onto the site was deemed more of a priority to JFH than providing appropriate changing facilities.
In the swimming pool area there are another list of does and dont's, but it is not a child friendly environment, there are no slides or anything to make the experience fun for the children - after an hour in the pool the children were bored and were not really interested in doing it again during the holiday.
For security you can place your belongings in a locker pool side, unfortunately the locker keys are not suitable for swimming pool use and rust, so you have to place the key on a board and collect a rubber band with a faint number on it - so much for security.
I could go on with more issues with this so called "park", but i think you have the picture by now. What are the good points of this "park".
1. Inside the accommodation was modern and clean, but the kitchen was lacking in space to prepare food and storage space.
2. The evening entertainment for the 4 to 10 year olds was fine. The only blot on this was the entertainers pushing of charity tickets, to the point when it became rather tasteless as they tried to embarrass people into buying the tickets. The price was a holiday in Disney - Paris - not a JFH holiday.