Our Half Term Holiday!

Most people in the UK with children are currently enjoying half term this week, however in Leicestershire we seem to have different term times to most of the country; our half term was last week. We spent the week away in Hopton, Norfolk. Unfortunately Phil was unable to take any time off work to come with us, so my mum, sister and brother stepped in.

I always find it hard trying to decide on somewhere to stay; I remembered as a child going on many Haven holidays and enjoying some quality family time, so within a few clicks of the mouse I had booked to stay at Haven's Hopton Site.
 

I was daunted at the prospect of travelling to Norfolk with both girls on my own as the drive turned out to be 4 hours with a couple of stops, and I have never driven for this amount of time before - I tend to let Phil do all of the driving as he does a lot of driving with his work so is more used to it than me. 

On arrival at Haven all I wanted to do was to sit down and have a cup of tea; I was happy that our caravan was available as soon as we checked in. Unfortunately we had numerous problems with the caravan allocated to us, and when we raised our concerns the majority of staff were not very helpful at all! The accommodation was disgustingly dirty, and an accident waiting to happen; my mum caught her foot on one of the metal strips between the laminate floor and carpet, I was really not happy that nails were exposed, Ruby or Lottie could have easily have hurt themselves and this is totally unacceptable.
 
Eventually we spoke to Charley and Sammy, the accommodation manager, who stepped in and arranged for us to have a different caravan, which was in a much better condition.

Once we moved caravans and where settled in we had no further problems until the gas fire could not light one evening; we were told that reception had gone home and that we had to speak to the out of hours team, who told me they would be unlikely to get the fire going. I was not happy with this response, it was a really cold evening and I had my daughters complaining of being cold; fortunately a lovely man called Victor went to a local shop to collect some bits needed and he managed to get the fire going.

Haven's Hopton site is well placed between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The site was incredibly clean and I often saw people waking around collecting rubbish and tidying the gardens.My girls and I loved the swimming pool, which featured a younger child's area where children could paddle and splash in jets of water, and the main pool also contained a flume which Ruby absolutely loved, but Lottie was a little unsure about!

As with most holiday sites there is live entertainment on during the day and evening, Ruby loved going to the children's club and meeting DJ Ned and taking part in the disco. There were also a lot of gaming machines, I was surprised at how many different types there were but Ruby enjoyed having a little go on the 2p machines!

We didn't get up to much on the site apart from to come back each evening for dinner and to go to bed; we ventured out to four local national trust properties in four days! We loved each and every single one of them and I can't wait to blog about them to show you how amazing they really are.