Hollington Park Glamping

It's very unfortunate that this guest did not enjoy her stay, but I think she didn't quite realise what she was booking. As you can see from all our other reviews, our site is absolutely beautiful, well managed and an absolute delight to stay in. It is always noted how friendly and helpful we are as we are a small family business, we live on site in our beautiful gingerbread cottage and always make ourselves available to help or advise or just have a general chat! I'm Mancunian so I enjoy a good gossip! I shall address this guests complaints as follows:

Check in time is 3pm, a confirmation was sent as standard with all the details you could possibly need for our site including a highlighted area stating check in cannot be accepted before 3pm as we are only a little family run site and it takes us the time between check out at 11 and check in at 3 to prep the pods bell tent and site so it is perfectly beautifully clean and tidy when guests arrive. This guest arrived at 1pm whilst I was out and helped herself to my private garden, which is quite clearly private and proceeded to picnic on my lawn outside my daughters bedroom, without being invited. This part of the garden is very secluded and no where near the site so I was a little confused as to why this guest thought it was available for her to make use of or acceptable for her to make use of, I was quite shocked when she came striding into my kitchen as this part of the house is no where near the glampsite, it is very private and no other guest has ever tried to make use of it, so I was quite surprised. We love our guests to roam around in the woodland and take advantage of the nature and beautiful surroundings, we even encourage guests to pop over and knock on the door or give us a shout if they need anything so that we can help, however as a family with young children we do need some privacy and do have to keep child protection in mind with people we don't actually know on our land, therefore we keep our garden as private which I think is quite reasonable. I as politely as I possibly could do, as I really didn't want to hurt her feelings, told this guest the garden was private and could she possibly move to the glampsite which has lots of seating available, even though she was much too early and the site wasn't ready for her. The site has no grass, because it is a very precious semi ancient English woodland, grass does not grow in semi ancient woodland, this is part of the beauty of our site as the woodland floor contains so many different plants and creatures, habitats in old logs and fallen trees, woodland is shaded, grass does not grow well in the shade. The woodland floor has so many habitats for various creatures and many endangered plants trees and shrubs grow within the woodland, grass has no place there as it is not a natural part of English woodland therefore we allow the site to have it's natural floor, which we feel is very attractive as it is made up of a mixture of peaty springy soil and a thick layer of leafy matter made up of various leaves, fallen conkers, acorns, berries, logs, twigs, dry bracken, bugs and flint making an amazing place to explore for children and adults alike!
We do not supply firewood, it is clearly stated in the confirmation and terms and conditions that if you wish to have a fire in the firepit, to bring your own firewood, I'm afraid we do not supply firewood, we do not claim to do so anywhere in our listing and it is unreasonable to ask us to do so, however we do always inform our guests that they are welcome to wander through the woodland and forage for any wood they may like to use, which is actually a really lovely activity for adults and children, and we regard it as one of the attractions of our site! we could charge for this, but we don't. We are very open and clear about what our site is on our listing, it clearly states that it is a woodland site. The pictures show exactly what the site is, in fact most guests say the pictures don't do the site justice! There is plenty of seating though for guests to picnic and eat or just chill out, each pod has it's own private decked area and there is a shared under cover seating area which is also decked in case it rains. I think it was rather unreasonable to expect to picnic in a garden which is quite clearly private, or in fact help oneself to a garden which is clearly private and belonging to a private house, so I was very sad that this upset this guest, however we do have to have a couple of rules and our garden being private for our children to safely and freely play in without the worry of people we do not actually know approaching them whilst we are not supervising them is quite reasonable, although many times, we have invited guests to come and see our chickens and rabbits if they have expressed an interest or have children who are interested as that's just something we enjoy doing when it is supervised by myself or my partner!
The BBQ had not yet been cleaned as the guest had arrived 2 hours early and her pod wasn't quite ready, this is why we send out a detailed confirmation stating check in cannot be before 3pm, as it is most likely that the accommodation will not be ready before 3pm. I told the guest she was welcome to use the seating in the glampsite and her pod but that it was not quite ready and I hoped she didn't mind if I just completed it as she ate her picnic. She proceeded to use the BBQ before I had chance to clean it, and cleaning a hot BBQ is rather difficult!!!
The shower overflowed as this guests child, had unfortunately filled the tray with leaves amongst other destructive activities such as hitting the beautiful brick built firepit with a large log causing it to collapse on one side and dangerously rolling the heavy log seating which could have injured him, I did have to request as nicely as possible in order to not upset the child, to stop these activities as injury was likely, I'm not quite sure why this guest did not do so herself. We had to call in a bricklayer to fix the pit at a cost of £130 which we could not retrieve from the guest meaning we were out of pocket by this amount.
This guest called us to tell us that the shower was overflowing, we immediately attended the site to address the problem, we are usually always on hand to help or address any issues that do arise as they sometimes do on any site. The guest told us that she had left the tap on, the shower was indeed still on and overflowing when we attended, I'm not quite sure why she didn't turn it off even though she knew she'd blocked the shower and it was overflowing. The shower was immediately unblocked and was back to working order within 10 minutes.
We are very clear in our listing about our site, it is located in a beautiful semi ancient woodland clearing which we are so very proud of and we are quite clear about the facilities and lighting. We are very clear that the toilet is a composting toilet, which is very common on glamp sites, as planning permission does not always permit a flushing loo, as ours does not, however the loo is still perfectly hygienic as it is emptied and cleaned twice daily. Unfortunately I think this guest neglected to read the details of our site and didn't quite realise what she was booking and if she had read the details of the listing, she would have realised that glamping and the countryside is sadly not to her taste. We think it's beautiful and we love living here and welcoming all our lovely guests who as you can see from the rest of our reviews have a lovely time.
Unfortunately I cannot control the English weather and if there is rain, I'm afraid it is out of my control, in our terms and conditions we clearly state this and mention that it is the guests responsibility to check the weather report, however please note that the site was particularly dry on this occasion as we had not had rain of any consequence for over a month, in fact the woodland floor was so dry we had had to place beaters around the site, in case any sparks from the firepit or BBQs caught light on the ground. This can be proven by the backdated weather reports available if you care to google. I think this guest was a little confused and perhaps a little untruthful about the mud as there wasn't any. The site doesn't tend to get muddy, even after heavy rainfall as it not only has good natural drainage because of the make up of the woodland floor but also because we have soakaway pits all around the site, therefore excess water drains rapidly.
The guest was very unhappy about the tractor noise in the field next to us cutting the spring grass for the cows during the winter, and we have extensive grounds made up of woodland and lawn, and beautiful herbaceous boarders which we are very proud of. These grounds must be maintained and unfortunately the mowing sometimes makes a noise, but it is necessary so that our guests can enjoy a beautiful view as they come and go from the site. The beauty of the grounds makes the site so special and we are very keen to keep it in an absolutely pristine state so that our guests can enjoy everything about their stay and unfortunately this sometimes means getting the mower out! we try our best to do this when guests have gone out but it is not always possible to do so as most people tend to stay on site because it is just so lovely and relaxing being at one with nature. As it happens on this day, the guest was slightly misinformed about the timing, being that we started at 6pm, and we were only actually mowing for half an hour, which is think is a small price to pay for beautiful well maintained grounds for our guests to enjoy.
I think this guest sadly didn't read the information about our site and that we are in the countryside and you have to expect countryside noises such as tractors, mowers, hedge cutting cows mooing etc, especially in the spring and summer and I'm afraid those noises are beyond our control as the farmers must carry out their work regardless of who is staying on our site, but please note if you do not like the countryside or woodland,or the English weather this site may not be for you. Thanks for reading! Claire x

Thankyou so much for such a lovely review, so glad you had a lovely time! re the loo and shower, I'm so sorry, but our planning permission only allows us to have lights in the pods, not the loo or the shower room or the surrounding area so that disturbance to the roosting bats and other wildlife is minimal....hence the note that a torch is a must!!! cxcx