Villamorey, Astúries, Espanya
Parcel·la de gespa i graveta amb electricitat (gran)
Em va agradar The location is incredible. It's halfway up a valley into the mountains and on one side you have that towering mountain rising from the entrance road. The onsite bar/restaurant provides a small choice of good food (pizza, burger etc.). The staff are lovely & helpful. The electric hookup is a useful modern 3-pin blue EURO at 16A. The shower block was clean with decent showers. There are several water points but only one waste disposal point (that I found) - but it's a fairly small site so not really an issue.
The pitches are of adequate size, but you can only get a caravan/van on + small side awning. You have to park the tow car in the car park at the entrance (or on the next pitch if the staff allow you to). The pitches are hard standing but really need a tidy up to get rid of some weeds.
The pitches are very flat (nice!) and terraced - the next pitch is about 18" lower down the slope.
The nearby small village is worth a walk to - but it has no shops or bars - the campsite provides the bar for the village it seems. The nearby larger village is about 20 minutes walk down the valley to the reservoir, but that seems to only have a couple of bars.
No em va agradar The pitches need a good weeding, but they aren't that bad to be fair.
A small point: The entrance to the site has a water gulley/drain across it, so you have to drive really slowly otherwise you end up with your wine glasses making friends with the carpet.
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Islares, Cantàbria, Espanya
Parcel·la de gespa amb electricitat opcional
Em va agradar The location of the site is excellent - near the sandy beach and has great little bar/restaurant with friendly & helpful staff. On site facilities are of a good standard (showers, loos etc.). They are more geared up for motorhomes though - I had to use the M/H service point to dispose of my grey waste.
Superb beach location for surfer dudes in their T1s (beach and public car parking area get very crowded in the holidays.
Warning: The beach area allows topless sunbathing - and - on one morning only we went for a walk to find two completely naked females in the surf. No pictures, the wife wouldn't let me...
Would I go back? Yes, I probably would.
No em va agradar The pitches are ridiculously small - probably only 8.5m x 8.5m. My 7.5m caravan only just fitted and only gave me enough room to wind the legs down at the back. (A "horsebox" sized motorhome tried to get onto one such pitch and simply gave up & left). The stupid electric boxes are only 6A and have the archaic two-pin "old style" continental sockets, meaning you need a 3-pin blue EURO to 2-pin converter cable. It may be that SOME of the boxes are better - I don't know. The boxes are locked to prevent people nicking the electric, but to be fair, they came out immediately when asked to connect/disconnect. The really concerning bit is the exit/entrance to the site - it's about 20% upslope and there's a blind hairpin halfway up, AND the road is covered with sand from the beach. So on exiting when towing, you stop to check the hairpin and then can't get traction to move further up the hill - an interesting exercise. The nice site man in the yellow jacket stopped the traffic going to the beach allowing us to exit safely in one go.
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Elmdon, Essex, Anglaterra
Parcel·la de gespa sense electricitat per a autocaravana
Em va agradar We loved the views, the informal nature of the site and the remoteness of the farm. The owners were lovely too.
No em va agradar We think that the lovely people at Pightle Farm have made a rod for their own backs by the way that you have to enter the site. You have to ring the bell to get them to open the gate, failing that you have to ring one of their two phone numbers. Several times they were (presumably) out in a no-signal area and we just sat there waiting. Why not give us the code number for the gate? There seems to be a keypad there for that purpose. They could change the number every week if they're worried about security possibly? It was the weekend of a massive Knebworth Concert and they eventually left the gate on manual as people we coming back at 1:00am which sort of defeats the purpose of a security gate.
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Del gerent: Hi sorry you felt like this The last week was a one off,Jubilee weekend ,half term and Knebworth concert which we were unaware was saying our campsite was the closest as it is about 28 miles away I hope it didn’t spoil your stay We did explain to everyone it is not normally like this at our site Come back and visit when it’s quieter
Marçon, Sarthe, França
Parcel·la de gespa amb electricitat opcional
Em va agradar Excellent site and location. We had pitches right by the lake side. We stayed one night as a stop-over to the Dordogne and two nights on the way back because we cut short our main break by one day.
The staff are brilliant! We try and speak French when in France, but when we were having difficultly with the language they stepped in with English.
You can swim in the lake off the man-made beach and the water is (relatively) clean and warm(ish) in June - it is a lake after all.
The pitches are quite large but only separated by small individual bushes that provide a visual barrier only - so a bit like some English sites.
Would I go back? Yes indeed.
No em va agradar Not much to dislike except because you are by a lake you get mosquitoes - so Marie Rose spray a must.
The grey water drain seems to be tucked away at the end of the site by reception, so we emptied the washing up water in the chemical point.
The "poubelle" is miles away at the end of the lake so you need to take a taxi ride to empty the rubbish.
The electric points (ours at least) have Live-Neutral swap - so taking a L-N swapper is advisable.
A small gotcha is that if you want bread in the morning you need to order it at reception the night before. This is quite an isolated site and the nearest town is about 5km away.
Ah, "Le WiFi" - it's chargeable so we didn't bother.
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Nuòuvic, Dordonya, França
Parcel·la de gespa amb electricitat opcional
Em va agradar The location - our pitch was right beside the river Isle and the pitches themselves are separated with hedges & trees making excellent shade from the 30 degree June sun and gave lots of privacy. Because we visited in June this particular part of the site was only 30% occupied and therefore very quiet.
There is an excellent restaurant within 10 minutes walk from the site called Le Kayola - excellent food and cheap, eminently drinkable, table wine in an air-conditioned conservatory.
The shower block is OK (but see below).
The site provides a perfect base for exploring the local area by foot, bicycle or car. The local town has what you would expect - bar, restaurant, bakers and a surfeit of pharmacies for some reason.
The highlight of the holiday was a Barber's Shop Quartet practicing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" across the river before they went into the Wedding Reception in the bar opposite to perform for the evening - absolutely magical (but see below). (Eg: youtube.com/watch?v=FGl5ReYunoY)
The bikes for hire on site are actually of a reasonable quality - 7-speed town bikes. You can cycle along the river on a cycle route for miles.
Note that the toilet block is multi-sex. This was reinforced later in the holiday by a French couple sharing one cubicle - interesting.
The people in the reception are pleasant & helpful enough - when they are actually there.
No em va agradar Right where to start? When we booked via PitchUp it said there was a pool. This is a lie. There is no pool on site. It's a public pool next to the campsite. Also IT IS NOT OPEN in June - well that's not actually true - it's open Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday and then only at certain times (11-13:30 and 2-7 from memory), and then you have to share it with hoards of screaming school children from the local village. At other times it's privately open for the local swimming club etc etc and you can't use it and, most frustratingly, it's closed with no one in it, but with the pool fully operational - why?
In fairness, the website of the actual campsite does say this hidden away somewhere BUT NOT ON PITCHUP. The man in Reception was most concerned about this and promised to contact PitchUp about this - so by the time this review makes it to the Internet, it may have been corrected.
When it was open we were turned away because you have to wear budgie-smugglers not shorts (the blokes that is).
You're by a slow-flowing river right? Therefore - Mosquitoes. Better take your Marie-Rose spray. Not a major problem so long as you spray from head-to-toe at 08:30. My wife missed a patch about the size of a postage stamp and it got bitten and infected, hence my intimate knowledge of the local pharmacies.
When we first went for a shower they were cold. When we complained en-mass we were told that because the campsite was relatively empty you needed to "run the water" a bit by opening the taps in the washing up sinks outside. This works fine - for a bit, then the temperature is a bit variable, but adequate. One of my group thinks he saw the owner fiddling with the boiler after we complained so the tap-running malarkey may have been a cunning diversion. And, as a gotcha, one or more of the 10 shower controls have the hot & cold water feeds reversed so that when you *think* you've turned it to hot...
Our pitches were made of 50% grass & 50% dried mud and weeds - this in part seems to be because of the excellent shade afforded by the trees, oh well, you can't have everything. Also, the electric points are grouped in eights - meaning you need a 50 metre cable if you get the end pitch.
At some point in the week the hedges were trimmed by a man with a petrol chainsaw at about 18:30 who left the pile of clippings where they fell.
Did I mention that the mythical pool was shut?
There is a bar across the river that plays (loud) live music and holds wedding receptions (and, no, they didn't actually do "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" when on stage that night - see above).
"Le WiFi" - yes they have Le WiFi. Well they do at reception where you can pick up "#1" router. "#2" router "has broken and we will fix it Tuesday". We think they meant Tuesday January 2023. You can just get "#1" router on the pitches but you are forced to watch a 30 second "sponsor movie" to get connected. This times-out every 30 minutes it seems and you have go through the rigamarole of watching the same movie again, and again, and again, and again. We gave up and used our mobile data.
What else? Oh yes, everything in the area seems "to be fully open in July & August" - including the Site Reception.
This slightly tongue-in-cheek review was written simply because of the lack of pool in June - we would not have booked the site at all if we had known about the pool. If the pool had been available all of the time to the campsite then I may not have written about the bloke with the chainsaw.
Would I go back? Not a chance.
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Del gerent: pas grand chose a répondre avec un pavé pareil, passé d’agréable vacances Alexandre