Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks

...outside Woolacombe, North Devon sits Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parc. This park is one of a trio of holiday centres. The others being The Golden Coast – mainly comprising of chalet style accommodation and Twitchen Parc, which is mainly camping. Woolacombe bay is predominantly a caravan park.

From Derbyshire it took us 5 and a half hours to reach our destination, with one stop on the way – the traffic was very light as we went just as the ...
...to suit all pockets at Woolacombe bay Park the superior Trinidad and Tobago caravans – to sleep four to six people. These caravans are 12ft wide and 37ft long and contain everything from maid service to a picnic table and barbecue outside your caravan. To the Estoril and Buttercup caravans for smaller families and couples, these contain two bedrooms, one double and one twin bedroom.
We chose the Estoril caravan, as from looking at the brochure ... more

Situated just outside Woolacombe, North Devon sits Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parc. This park is one of a trio of holiday centres. The others being The Golden Coast – mainly comprising of chalet style accommodation and Twitchen Parc, which is mainly camping. Woolacombe bay is predominantly a caravan park.

From Derbyshire it took us 5 and a half hours to reach our destination, with one stop on the way – the traffic was very light as we went just as the school term commenced for the majority of the country.

Our checking in time wasn’t until 4pm as stated on our comfimation of payment letter, however we arrived at 2pm and were able to go straight to our caravan.

There is a caravan to suit all pockets at Woolacombe bay Park the superior Trinidad and Tobago caravans – to sleep four to six people. These caravans are 12ft wide and 37ft long and contain everything from maid service to a picnic table and barbecue outside your caravan. To the Estoril and Buttercup caravans for smaller families and couples, these contain two bedrooms, one double and one twin bedroom.
We chose the Estoril caravan, as from looking at the brochure it appeared to cater for our needs. On arrival at the caravan we were able to park right outside the caravan and had breathtaking views of Woolacombe bay and the Island of Lundy from the lounge area.

There were three concrete steps up into the caravan, which were in good repair and were quite wide. The only problem here was the door opened outwards, so you had to be careful not to knock yourself off the step whilst opening the door.

Once inside the caravan it was time to explore! The double bedroom was pleasantly decorated and had a single wardrobe and two over the bed storage cupboards. Each bed is supplied with Duvet and two pillows in the case of double beds and one in the case of single beds. You can provide your own bed linen, although this can be hired from the Holiday Park – at a cost of £15 per break state this on your booking form. The second twin bedroom was similarly decorated, although the ‘single’ beds were no such thing! They were very small indeed and a single sheet almost went twice around the mattress! You can hire cots, bedsides and highchairs for additional fees, this must be requested on your booking form.

The kitchen area of the caravan was better than I anticipated, containing a full size kitchen sink, gas stove and oven/grill and a full size fridge with freezer box at the top. There was a kettle provided also, along with crockery, cutlery and cooking utensils. It is possible to hire a microwave for your caravan; this will cost you £7 for the week. We had no plans to cook at all, so we didn’t bother and didn’t miss it at all.

The main area of the caravan was the lounge; this contained further wardrobe and cupboard space, a large seating area and a table and stool. The seating wasn’t too comfortable but as we spent little time actually sitting there, this didn’t bother us too much at all. Also in the lounge area was a television, which was tuned to all the regular channels apart from Channel 5 and also had 3 video channels – showing in the daytime, two children orientated films and by night films with 15 + certificates. In the lounge is also a gas fire, something I thought we wouldn’t use at all – however as we were on top of the cliffs, at night the temperature dropped dramatically, so the fire had some use during our stay. There was also a smoke alarm situated in the lounge area, which we tested on arrival to find it didn’t work – off to reception and they gave us a battery with no problem.

The bathroom in the caravan was a lot better than I imagined it would be – my only other experience of caravan holidays was as a child, when you had to hike across a field to use the toilets and showers! The bathroom contained a full size toilet and basin and a shower over a half bath type affair. This was great, as James hates showers – preferring to splash about in the bath, so he thought this little bath was fantastic.

The décor throughout the caravan was pleasant and clean, with wallpaper on the walls with matching curtains and protective covering on the duvets and pillows. The only negative aspects of the whole caravans were the mattresses on the beds. The double bed felt as though it was stuffed with coconut shells (whole ones!) and the single bed felt as though it has strips of flex every couple of inches. To remedy this, we folded James’ duvet in half and he slept between the two halves, and we put the other single duvet on the mattress, then the sheet on top. The only other problem was how thin the walls of a caravan are. We could hear the children in the caravan behind us running up and down in their caravan and shouting, not to mention their parents rowing almost all the time! Perhaps a little word of advice here is NOT to put food out for birds or seagulls whilst in your caravan – we witnessed a rather nasty vendetta going on between two lots of holidaymakers whilst we were there. They were throwing bread onto each other’s caravans roofs – the result was a tremendous amount of noise as the birds landed on the roofs and scrabbled about for the bread crumbs!

So once you have settled in to your caravan and unpacked all your belongings what else is there to do on site? Well James managed quickly to find the play park, consisting of a jungle gym type of construction, a dinosaur slide, swings and a roundabout. This was well maintained and had that ‘springy’ concrete looking stuff found in many playgrounds now. Near to the play park was situated the crazy golf and the bowling. Clubs and bowls were available from reception, with a £1 deposit for clubs and golf balls – you had to pay 50p for each ball lost and a £5 deposit for the bowls – which should you lose the bowls or the jack you lost your deposit. I thought the bowls area was in a particularly silly spot to be honest, right on the edge of a steep embankment, which I had to fight through on occasion to retrieve bowls. I did suggest to the Holiday Park, that a small barrier would be a good idea, to stop over enthusiastic people from losing their balls!

Woolacombe Bay Holiday Park has one indoor pool, which is actually quite small. You have to have a token from reception to enter the pool, through a turnstile. Once through the turnstile you have to press a button to return to the locker and changing area. Do make sure your children go to the toilet before getting in the pool, as should you need the lavatory – you have to terminate your swimming session. There is a security camera in the pool area, but children under the age of 18 have to be supervised by someone over 18. There is no lone swimming allowed – so if you want to swim and you are on your own and no one else is in the pool, then tough.

Other facilities available at Woolacombe Bay include Solarium – a 20-minute session available from 8 am to 10pm. Club Romano Spa – this was a superb facility and included steam room, dry sauna, wet sauna, plunge pool, spa bath and hot beds. You can also have a variety of beauty treatments for a price – these include, waxing of various parts of your anatomy, massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure.

On site shop – the shop available is a Spar shop and pretty much catered for everything you might need whilst on holiday – however as you can imagine the prices are much higher than the local supermarket. We tried in vain to find out where the local supermarket was – but none of the staff would tell us – if we wanted something in particular, then the Spar would get it for us! We did eventually find out that the local Tesco's was about 10 miles away!

The reception area at Woolacombe bay holds everything you need to know about the park and the surrounding area. We found the staff very helpful indeed, apart from not telling us where the local supermarket was! From reception you can get into the on site bar and the restaurant. The upstairs restaurant had daily specials – although some of the specials actually ran for two days. A lot of people found the prices rather expensive, children’s meals cost £1.99 and adult meals from £7.95 upwards. The menu wasn’t vast at all, mainly consisting of something with chips, peas and salad garnish. We ate there on the first night, but didn’t bother again!

Also in the reception are blackboards telling you of forthcoming trips for that week. Many people had traveled to the park via coach or train. I actually felt quite sorry for these people, as there was only one trip into Barnstaple for ‘shopping’ once a week. Unless you have a car you are very limited to the facilities on the three park sites.

Entertainment on the parks is varied and they do try to cater for all tastes. Whilst we were there, the comedian David Copperfield was performing. They have regular bingo nights and discos for adults and children. Although there was entertainment on the site, we preferred to go off and do our own thing.

There is a free crèche available at one of the other parks in the chain; the maximum time is one and a half-hours a day per child. There is also a club for children aged between five and twelve, which is free and provides morning activities. Whichever park you choose you can take advantage of all the facilities on each of the parks – taking advantage of the free bus to and from each one.

The Beach – although not provided by the park the beach is absolutely superb! The sands really are golden and the water is so blue you could almost imagine you are abroad. The beach has the coveted Blue Flag award meaning that is complies with EEC standards. The beach was regularly patrolled by lifeguards and coastguards. There are two sections to the beach – one for people with dogs, and one just for people. The sea is very rough, even on calm days, making it very popular with surfers – boards and wetsuits can be either hired or bought at the many surf shops close to the beach. Now a strong word of warning, DO NOT attempt to walk from Woolacombe bay Holiday Park to the town or beach. It is a pleasant enough walk, apart from the steep gradient of the hill you have to walk down. The narrow winding country road is hell on the thighs as you walk down and will guarantee you ache for days afterwards!

There is a bus every hour, from the Holiday Park visiting the other three parks and then down to the beach. This will cost you £1 per person for the week, under fives travel free, such a bargain you cant afford to say no – especially as parking your car in the town for the day will cost you between £3.50 and £4.00.

Woolacombe itself is quite small, with few shops that only really cater for the beach crowd selling or hiring out wetsuits and surfboards. They also sell the usual inflatables (the sea is far too rough for them to be used safely), buckets and spades, sticks of rock, boxes of biscuits and other 'souvenirs’.

All in all we had a very pleasant ‘beach’ holiday for less than £200 for the three of us for the accommodation for one week. The caravan suited our needs well as we only really used it for showering and changing and sleeping. Although the park appeared to cater to almost all needs, I doubt we would return there again. The main drawback is the distance from the beach, which features high on our list of priorities as James is so young at present. That and also the need to use the car to get anywhere of interest.

 

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