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We were up at Minehead last Sunday and driving along the coast road there were lots of campsites in the Watchet/St Audries area that would surely make far better bases than Butlins?  You can then spend your money on clean facilities like the Splash at Bridgwater for water flumes for instance.  Beautiful area to holiday though.  Nether Stowey and Over Stowey are worth a visit and the drive through Dunster and down through Exmoor to Tiverton is stunning.  There are also loads of campsites on this road in beautiful scenery including a club site.

Ali

Quote: Originally posted by AClayton on 02/8/2007

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Hi All

Rizzo is right. Timeshare hotel is no where near the site. The tip etc was used for general dump. We paid £208 for 5 nights. The weather was so bad that we had to cut it short a night due to the centre seam of our tent leaking. The smell was too much to bear. I must point out that if you want to go horse riding, book it the day you arrive as you'll have no chance. Something that I thought you might want to do. We didn't get a look in. Our tent is 25ft square and I told phoned Butins twice to confirm this. When we got there however, we had been given a small pitch!!!!!!!!!!! the man on the site gave us another pitch which should have been for a motorhome. Anyway. Sorry to put you guys off - we would have prefered Bognor as it'd nearer. The tent is packed away........don't know how long for!!!. AClayton.

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Cannot really see what all the fuss is about.

Butlins does not pretend to be anything that it is not.  It is somewhere to crash at night when not using the facilities.

Thanks Angie

I have the photos of the tip. I was more concerned with the broken glass all over the floor. My family were well shocked when I showed them back home. Bit worrying with 2 kids walking through in the dark. Other members have made good points too about other campsites. We just chose Butlins because of our dreadful summer. We live and learn and I'm not put off camping again but would like to be in the more picturesque surroundings next time. I would defenately use this web site to do a good check out before hand. A friend of mine camped in Longleat. They said it was superb. Any way, no more Hi di hi for us.

AClayton

We've stayed at Longleat too. It's a Caravan Club site and the facilities are all up the high standard you'd expect. You can hear the sealions barking all night too! Although we enjoyed the safari park & the house, we were disappointed in the other 'attractions'. it all seemed very tawdry and tatty, we were quite surprised considering how lovely the house is, why is there all the tat?  This was about 3 years ago, so hopefully there's been some improvement.

I don't know which part of the country you're in, but there are so many lovely sites in lovely areas with plenty to do if keeping children occupied is a concern.

Hi Angie

Glad to hear about the Longleat adventure! I might forget that one. Had enough of the sheep and time zoned out cockerel at Butlins! You have to laugh eh. We in South Essex so any where out of here is a bonus believe me. We have two girls aged 10 and 8. Any suggestions on where to go would be greatly appreciated especially if they take large tents!!!

Alison 

We really like south Dorset, there's so much to see and do and there are lots of campsites which come with great write-ups. Poole Harbour is huge & full of boats, Purbeck is pretty and Studland Beach goes on for miles, there's always Corfe Castle too. Further along is Monkey World and the Tank museum where you can drive a tank ... lots of pretty villages and nice pubs. The coastline has some steep bits with great walking and there are nice beaches dotted about. In West Dorset you have Charmouth (great beach and fossils to find) and Lyme Regis (very pretty, your girls will want to walk along the Cobb like Meryl Streep), Weymouth is a seaside town with a harbour and the swannery at Abbotsbury is lovely. Chesil Beach is a natural pebble huge swathe of space. There are farm parks dotted about and probably lots of other attractions that I haven't mentioned as we tend to just enjoy the countryside and do lots of walking. Mine are only 6 & nearly 5 so we're not at the stage of them needing to be entertained all the time!

North of you must be Suffolk & Norfolk, I've been there a couple of times and thought it very pretty. If you look at the Camping & Caravanning Club website, just looking at where there sites are placed gives you ideas of where to go camping. Their sites are very clean & tidy with good facilities & (cross fingers) I've never met a grumpy Site Manager yet. They are keen to enforce the quiet rule so you shouldn't get woken by any noise and there's always a small play area, some sites have bigger ones.