Overall, we have been disappointed with this site. Hillhead is in a beautiful area with gorgeous scenery. Used as base, then you have easy access to the coast, with a number of car parks if you aren't too energetic. We recommend visits to Kingswear, the Daymark Tower, that can be seen from the site, and if you get one of the regular ferries across the Dart, a trip to Dartmouth, Slapton Sands and especially Start Point. It will cost you £3.50 to park, but on a wild day its utterly jaw dropping and atmospheric.
The site itself is large, but also very compact, and some of the pitches at the bottom are ridiculously small. So small, that A frames are almost jutting into the road, and separate car parking is required away from the pitch. This is evidenced by fact that as people on better pitches left the site at the end of their stay, those in the cheap seats dived into reserve them with equipment, before moving their caravans or motorhomes.
Other pitches are in small dead end roads,which are difficult to manouvre in and out of.
We were lucky, and had a spacious grass pitch at the top and are very happy with it, but would estimate that about 20% of the pitches are poor, and would feel short changed had we ended up on one of these.
The wardens work hard,but I get the feeling that they are under staffed.The waste bins and recycling bins were frequently over flowing. On a particular windy day, the recycling bins near us were so full the top blew open, scattering rubbish around the area. When emptied, the over flow wasn't picked up, so we did this ourselves. As I type, the rubbish has just been emptied, but not the recycling, which is again over flowing.
The wristband system here isn't working as well as on other sites.The documents given to you on arrival state clearly that you will given a wristband which will have your pitch number on, but the ones given to us were blank. The first time I used mine, it was clear that this was an issue, as a man came out of the shower block, said he couldn't remember which was his,took the nearest band and said 'that one will do'. All the other bands were blank also
The next morning, I reported this to reception where one female warden told me that they didn't have space to store the bands and besides, writing numbers on them was too time consuming! She gave me 2 bands with obscure numbers on them, so that we could differentiate them from others.
We took these back, and scrubbed off the numbers with biro, and wrote our own on. Must have taken all of 10 seconds!
The female warden concerned also booked us in when we arrived. In 5 years with the club she is the most abrupt I have encountered, and completely unaproachable.
As on many other sites, speeding vehicles are an issue. With so many pitches surrounded by hedges and close to the road, the chances of a child darting out in front of a vehicle is a high, especially by the tents.
TimboC
Reviewed on 19/09/2020 17:15
