Our holiday in Keswick started a little differently to our usual caravan holidays.
Some weeks before, I found a caravan site just outside Keswick that seemed to have everything we wanted, so I tried to book our stay online. This was the first hurdle. Eventually it dawned on me that there was no way on their website to book online, despite the home page having a large sign saying "10% discount for online bookings" so I phoned them to ask how to do the online booking and she said, "I'm confused by this web stuff, so if people ask, I give them the discount over the phone" I left a £20 deposit, against a 2 week stay.
I booked the Friday off work, so we could get up to Keswick before the mad Friday holiday crawl on the M6 Northbound. I got the caravan to ours in good time and we loaded it and set off - at 7.30PM!
Our 2 hour trip took 3 hours, and so we ended up at the site at 10.30pm, in the pitch blackness of a lake district night. We pulled into the site with no lights showing anywhere on the place, and started looking for our pitch. The owner had said we were near the main shower block and to take any available pitch and set up there and she would see us in the morning.
We could not see the shower block, and all but one caravan had no lights showing. So we knocked on this one caravan and asked the whereabouts of the shower block and they directed us up this hill.
We had gone to great pains to point out that we had an elderly person with us who needed to be near the shower block. This did not seem particularly near, as it was up a 100 yards long, 45 degree slope! It was also surrounded by static caravans who had their own facilities... weird.
We pitched the van as near as possible then drove up to the facilities. They were in darkness, with automatic lights that only came on when you got very close. The door handles were broken and the lightbulbs were mostly missing. If you wanted a shower at night, then you had to do it by braille.
The whole place was covered in unpainted cement. Personally I would not have sat on any of the toilets, nor would I have enjoyed a shower in there. The spiders were enjoying it though.
Needless to say the women in the party were not impressed either. Belsen was mentioned.
Of course we did not put the awning up that night, as it began to rain again as soon as we arrived.
Next morning the place looked no better, so we went off the site and looked at another site down the road. This was much better, so we booked in there for the remainder of our holiday.
We got back to the original site and hooked the van up again and drove off. If there had been anybody in the reception, then we would have had words, but the place was deserted at 11am on a Saturday morning. We didn't bother hanging around.
In all, we had seen the man in the caravan on the Friday evening and a woman walking her dog on the Saturday morning, and nobody else on the site. I should have realised something was amiss when I rang to book and was told they had loads of vacancies when everywhere else was full.
We pitched up at the other site and it was far better. Someone in reception, a shop on site, and toilets/showers etc that you could actually use. Bliss.
After this start, everything went well. We had some good meals out, some good meals in. We did a little walking and even saw the Ospreys out fishing. we went up a couple of the lower passes, as the clutch was starting to slip I didn't fancy anything too steep.
We tried something different this year, both Lorraine and I had seriously bad backs when we slept on the caravan bed, so we decided to buy an inner tent and using our inflatable bed, we slept in the awning. this was great until we woke up on the deck. Yes, the airbed had sprung a leak. So we bought another airbed and that stayed up all week, most impressive. So a success story on the bed front.
Skiddaw is a nice little hill, a Sunday stroll for the locals, but with Lorraine's mum with us, we couldn't do it justice, as it would mean leaving her sat in the car, alone, for hours on end, not fair on her.
I managed to lock the keys in the car and I got the AA man least likely to take up a career in car theft, but he got us in eventually.
We went to the theatre to see "Private Lives" and the male lead was a replacement who had only found out a few hours before, so he was drastically under-rehearsed, so he did the whole thing with the script open in front of him. It made for a very amusing evening.
We had arranged to cut our holiday short and go to visit relatives on the South Coast for the second week, so we set off for home on the Friday afternoon. We got home at 7.00pm, half an hour short of a full week away. We unpacked the van and I went and parked it at Heron Lodge at 9pm, amazing how quickly you can unpack a van compared to packing it.
Some weeks before, I found a caravan site just outside Keswick that seemed to have everything we wanted, so I tried to book our stay online. This was the first hurdle. Eventually it dawned on me that there was no way on their website to book online, despite the home page having a large sign saying "10% discount for online bookings" so I phoned them to ask how to do the online booking and she said, "I'm confused by this web stuff, so if people ask, I give them the discount over the phone" I left a £20 deposit, against a 2 week stay.
I booked the Friday off work, so we could get up to Keswick before the mad Friday holiday crawl on the M6 Northbound. I got the caravan to ours in good time and we loaded it and set off - at 7.30PM!
Our 2 hour trip took 3 hours, and so we ended up at the site at 10.30pm, in the pitch blackness of a lake district night. We pulled into the site with no lights showing anywhere on the place, and started looking for our pitch. The owner had said we were near the main shower block and to take any available pitch and set up there and she would see us in the morning.
We could not see the shower block, and all but one caravan had no lights showing. So we knocked on this one caravan and asked the whereabouts of the shower block and they directed us up this hill.
We had gone to great pains to point out that we had an elderly person with us who needed to be near the shower block. This did not seem particularly near, as it was up a 100 yards long, 45 degree slope! It was also surrounded by static caravans who had their own facilities... weird.
We pitched the van as near as possible then drove up to the facilities. They were in darkness, with automatic lights that only came on when you got very close. The door handles were broken and the lightbulbs were mostly missing. If you wanted a shower at night, then you had to do it by braille.
The whole place was covered in unpainted cement. Personally I would not have sat on any of the toilets, nor would I have enjoyed a shower in there. The spiders were enjoying it though.
Needless to say the women in the party were not impressed either. Belsen was mentioned.
Of course we did not put the awning up that night, as it began to rain again as soon as we arrived.
Next morning the place looked no better, so we went off the site and looked at another site down the road. This was much better, so we booked in there for the remainder of our holiday.
We got back to the original site and hooked the van up again and drove off. If there had been anybody in the reception, then we would have had words, but the place was deserted at 11am on a Saturday morning. We didn't bother hanging around.
In all, we had seen the man in the caravan on the Friday evening and a woman walking her dog on the Saturday morning, and nobody else on the site. I should have realised something was amiss when I rang to book and was told they had loads of vacancies when everywhere else was full.
We pitched up at the other site and it was far better. Someone in reception, a shop on site, and toilets/showers etc that you could actually use. Bliss.
After this start, everything went well. We had some good meals out, some good meals in. We did a little walking and even saw the Ospreys out fishing. we went up a couple of the lower passes, as the clutch was starting to slip I didn't fancy anything too steep.
We tried something different this year, both Lorraine and I had seriously bad backs when we slept on the caravan bed, so we decided to buy an inner tent and using our inflatable bed, we slept in the awning. this was great until we woke up on the deck. Yes, the airbed had sprung a leak. So we bought another airbed and that stayed up all week, most impressive. So a success story on the bed front.
Skiddaw is a nice little hill, a Sunday stroll for the locals, but with Lorraine's mum with us, we couldn't do it justice, as it would mean leaving her sat in the car, alone, for hours on end, not fair on her.
I managed to lock the keys in the car and I got the AA man least likely to take up a career in car theft, but he got us in eventually.
We went to the theatre to see "Private Lives" and the male lead was a replacement who had only found out a few hours before, so he was drastically under-rehearsed, so he did the whole thing with the script open in front of him. It made for a very amusing evening.
We had arranged to cut our holiday short and go to visit relatives on the South Coast for the second week, so we set off for home on the Friday afternoon. We got home at 7.00pm, half an hour short of a full week away. We unpacked the van and I went and parked it at Heron Lodge at 9pm, amazing how quickly you can unpack a van compared to packing it.
posted by Alan at 3:54 AM
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