Holiday parks back in fashion

Jul 5 2009 by Richard Kirkman, Sunday Sun

RICHARD KIRKMAN has a family break with Haven in Lincolnshire

The entertainment in the bars was the usual mix of kids’ songs, magic shows and the like, developing over the evening into more grown-up stuff. Plenty going on.

Not that we stayed all that long – the din being just a little bit too much for our nine-month-old youngest son. There were quite a few babies in there. Oddly, their dads seemed to be really young, or really old, like me.

The only issue I have with holiday sites is that although the holidays themselves are cracking value, anything you buy on site has a big mark-up.

On the first night we bought fish and chips for four. Very nice – but at £22 they managed to be both mouth-watering and eye-watering.

We sent the kids off to the arcade with £3 or £4 each and they had spent up within 20 minutes or so. I seem to remember my brother and I making a quid last all afternoon when we were dispatched to the arcades as kids – or so it appears to me now.

We did however find one bargain. My son likes the crazy golf, which cost the two of us £4 for maybe about 15 minutes’ play.

But I like the pitch and putt, so after the crazy golf I made him walk the length of the park to the course. It cost £5 for two, which considering it took us a good hour to play was terrific value.

And another good choice was the climbing wall, another new development at Thorpe Park, which my daredevil younger daughter tried out. £6 for a couple of climbs and a screaming trip down the zip wire was not at all bad.

We spent about half a day in Cleethorpes itself – and to be honest half a day is probably all it is good for. It’s better than poor old Whitley Bay, but not as well stocked with things to do as South Shields.

There are some signs of regeneration in the south of the town. In the town centre what had clearly been a large building had very recently been reduced to rubble. But, as Whitley Bay shows, reducing a building to rubble is not necessarily a precursor to something attractive being put up in its place, or indeed anything at all.

Close to Thorpe Park itself was Pleasure Island, one of those enclosed super-funfairs with a selection of white knuckle rides. You would have to spend a good few hours in there to make it worthwhile because a family ticket was £60.

We gave it a miss – you won’t catch me on anything that spins or goes up and down really quickly, and my eldest son has inherited the wimp gene.

There’s no great secret to the success of Haven’s parks. They are doing the simple things well and are providing a holiday that it is a long way above the tatty Hi-di-Hi image that holiday parks will probably never quite shake off. Good, clean fun in good, clean surroundings.

We’re convinced, anyway. In a few weeks’ time our whole family will be back at a Haven site, this time for a week’s break at a park in Somerset.