Long Hazel Park

Thank you for taking the time to leave a review of your stay with us. The review immediately below is from your nearby neighbour, who seemed very happy with their accommodation and, along with their friends in another caravan, had nothing to dislike in their 10/10 rating!

We are pleased to see you found us 5/5 for cleanliness, which we all know is incredibly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is for this reason that our toilet and shower block facilities are closed, which were the terms you booked with on Pitchup. We did follow your booking up with both an email and a telephone call to ensure that you were happy using your own, on board facilities, which you told us you were happy with prior to arrival.

It is also good to see you ranked us highly for location, with close proximity to the roads you needed for easy access to our park. You will see 86% of our customers rank us as a “peaceful” location, including those who stayed on the neighbouring pitch. We also see you rated us highly for customer service. It is, therefore, a shame that you didn't approach us with any concerns during your stay.

Despite the terms and conditions of bookings clearly being displayed on our listing, you chose to book without informing us that you were towing an enormous twin-axle caravan with an equally large commercial Transit van. As your arrival clearly broke our contracted terms, you put us in a very difficult position and we agreed to uphold your booking as the season was coming to a close, despite this meaning you required two large pitches which was in excess of your booking. To our surprise, upon pitch assignment, you informed us that you kept your work tools in your van and were using our holiday touring park as a work base for nine nights.

You were personally shown to your pitch and did not mention any issues with being pitched near a tree. Had this been an issue, we would have re-shuffled our weekend bookings to accommodate you in a more open area. A small carport was being installed near your pitch on neighbouring land, however, as you were out at work all days, we cannot see how this affected your stay as their working hours were the same as yours. Whilst a helicopter may have flown over on the one Wednesday evening that you stayed, this was not of any concern to any of our other customers and training activities are not carried out near our park, and certainly not on a weekly basis.

We are pleased to see you pointed out in your review that you found us to be a “lovely” park, with close proximity to a good pub and that you felt secure during your stay with us. Unfortunately, we would not be in a position to accept any further bookings from you as you were using our holiday park as a commercial working base.

Thank you so much for your 10/10 review of your stay with us! We're so pleased you found us to be top quality across Value for Money, Customer Service and Cleanliness.

It was lovely to meet both yourselves and your friends, who we were able to accommodate next to your pitch despite booking through different channels.

We hope to welcome you all back again soon!

Thank you for your review and we are really pleased to hear you enjoyed your 3 night stay with us. We're pleased we were able to accommodate your special request of being surrounded by trees. We have planted around 50 more this year and some of our most established can be seen in the background of your photograph.

As you've rated us 10/10 for location, value for money, accommodation, customer service and cleanliness, and pointed out so many positives, we're disheartened to see that you've only given us a 6 overall. You have, quite rightly, pointed out that we are a place to relax without children on site. We do not have activities on site as we only operate our touring park across 2 acres, and, again, quite rightly you have pointed out that we have a pub 2 minutes walk away, so there is no need to compete with our own clubhouse. We're a little confused by your dislikes, as you've specifically chosen a small adult only park for peace and quiet in a rural surrounding, but also wanted loud activities on site. We find the majority of our guests are looking to "get away from it all" this year and are happy to go for walks and cycle rides in the beautiful surrounding countryside, rather than looking for indoor activities this year.

We feel there are many benefits to be part of a thriving village, with easy access, wonderful small businesses such as the local pub and bakery that deliver to the park, a cider farm, a great farm shop with tea rooms just a mile away and two local shops within two miles. As explained in your Welcome Pack email, we're on good public transport links to nearby towns and villages, with a whole host of nearby activities laid out on our website to help plan your days out.

We're glad to see you'd recommend us to friends, however, just a bit of a shame your overall score didn't reflect all the great individual marks!

Thank you so much for your 10/10 review and we're really pleased to hear you enjoyed your stay with us.

We're very happy to hear you found us to be very receptive. We live on site and are always available to help. We're also sending out welcome packs prior to arrival this year to help you plan your stay and offer recommendations for pubs, walks and places to visit.

We hope to see you again very soon, we're open all year!

Thank you so much for your wonderful review and we're very pleased to hear you enjoyed your stay with us over the August Bank Holiday weekend!

We're really glad our welcome pack sent prior to arrival was of good use. We know going out this year is a little different, and sometimes quite daunting, so we like to let our customers know all of our safety measures put in place this year. We're also working with the local pub, bakery, farm shop and ice cream man to deliver food and treats on site this year and hope this made your stay a little easier.

It was lovely to meet you both and we look forward to seeing you again soon!

Thank you so much for your great review of your stay with us over the August Bank Holiday.

We're so pleased to hear you made good use of our dog walking map and explored the area while you were with us. We've had lots of good comments from our customers this year about the QR code which links straight to the dog walking map on your phone for easy access when you're out and about. We hope you managed to pop in for a cream tea at the local farm shop on your route!

We hope to see you again soon and thanks again for the recommendation!

Thank you very much for your review and we're pleased to see you rated us 10/10! We're particularly happy to see you gave our cleanliness top marks during the pandemic.

We're a little confused that you found us too remote for you, as there's a long list of things to do on our Pitchup listing, where they rightly say "there's enough to do near here to keep you busy for months"! Our Welcome Pack gives information about some of the local places to eat and drink: we have 3 good pubs within two miles, an excellent farm shop and cafe within a mile, a tea room within a mile, a local cider farm who do tasting within half a mile and an exceptional bakery who deliver to us 5 days a week if you don't fancy driving down. We also have buses running from just outside the park to Shepton Mallet and Yeovil several times a day, linking to Castle Cary station, which is a short train journey from Bath, Bristol and the seaside. On top of this, we can recommend incredible local art galleries, gardens and National Trust properties, market towns and outlet shopping centres, museums, vineyards and artisan shops all over the county. All of these are outlined on our Online Reception on our website, there really is so much to do!

We look forward to welcoming you back again and hope we have inspired you with some of the great things to do in the area next time!

Thank you for your review. We appreciate your comments regarding being a small, tidy site. No doubt you would have seen us working very hard maintaining the grounds during your stay and we would have been able to assist with your problems at any time.

Regarding your confusion in terms of the facilities which were open, you booked via Pitchup where the listing clearly stated that the toilet and shower facilities, and Reception area were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. This is mentioned twice on our listing, once highlighted in red.

Your booking was created on 22 July. Once we had received your booking, we then emailed you on the same day to to confirm that you had booked without our shower and toilet facilities open and to check you had your own facilities available. You replied the same evening to say "Yes that's fine thank you" as you had your own facilities on board in your motorhome.

You were then sent our Welcome Pack on 10 August, 10 days before your arrival, to outline our new check-in procedure, a map of the local area, a menu for the local bakery which deliver on-site, information regarding the gate entry and your pitch. Included in this email was a clear map of the facilities, showing which facilities are open and which are not, to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. As explained via our Pitchup listing, and in the emails sent to you, our showers and toilets are closed and our Washing Up room is closed. Our Chemical Disposal point is open 24 hours a day. We have installed a new outdoor sink for handwashing. We have installed new hand sanitising points around the park. All water taps and electric hook-up points are still available. The recycling station is also still open.

We have also, this year, created an Online Reception on our website to enable customers to plan their stays, access the pub menu, see what is open in the area to do, information for public transport and shops and provide our free Wifi details. We have upgraded our Wifi system to facilitate this.

You then emailed us direct on 15 August, following your booking via Pitchup, to ask "A little confused reading your Covid measures. Just want to check, do you have any toilets open?". We explained to you that, due to social distancing, the fact that COVID-19 spreads through human waste, and in order to comply with our site license and COVID-safe certification through VisitEngland and The AA, we would not be opening our shower and toilet facilities this season until the pandemic is over. This is for the safety of all of our customers, which you will see has been well-received by all other customers this year. You replied to our email to say "thank you".

During your three night stay, you did not express any problems with using your own on-board facilities and did not approach us with any issues. By the time of your stay, you had been informed on four separate occasions that our toilet and shower facilities would not be open and had agreed you were happy with this; once contractually via Pitchup, and twice by personal email.

Both on our Pitchup listing and in your Welcome Pack, it was explained to you that we have a dedicated recycling centre as this is very important in South Somerset to preserve our beautiful county. Of our six bins in our recycling station, there are two general waste bins. You would have seen these, and indeed, used them. If you weren't able to find them, you could have asked us where they were at any time.

It is a shame on this occasion you did not seem to understand the terms of your booking. We have contacted Pitchup regarding this as the layout of closed facilities seems to be confusing for a few customers. We have asked that Pitchup change the layout of the listings and put in a pop-up upon booking to confirm that customers have read COVID-safe measures. Pitchup have decided they will not be doing this. We have informed Pitchup why some of our facilities are not open this year, to comply with legislation and obtain VisitEngland and The AA certification, but they are not concerned about why this has been put in place: to keep our customers safe.

88% of our Pitchup customers feel we are a "peaceful" site.

We would also like to highlight that, when booking via Pitchup, 15% of your pitch fee goes straight to them in commission. This may be why you felt Value for Money was a little lower than you may expect.

We are sorry to see on this occasion, we were not for you. We will be sticking to our guns and keeping our shower and toilet facilities closed to keep our customers safe and ensure that COVID-19 does not spread on our park.

Thank you very much for your very kind review and we are so glad to hear you enjoyed your stay with us.

Our showers and toilets are closed at present, due to COVID-19 restrictions, which were listed on our Pitchup listing at the time of booking. This is to ensure the safety of all of our guests, as the virus is known to transmit through human waste.

We're really pleased to see you made good use of the local pub and shops and hope you managed to try out the pub and bakery delivery services to the park too!

See you again soon!

Thank you so much for your glowing review of your stay with us!

We really appreciate all your kind comments, especially after such a tough year. We have made lots of improvements to our grounds this season, including installing new lighting, outdoor sink facilities, upgrading our free WiFi and improving planting and new trees around the park. It is great to hear you enjoyed all of these new features during your stay.

We hope to welcome you back again soon!