BROADLY speaking, I think it would be fair to say that the public conception of a Haven Caravan Park is that it is — in a blunt nutshell — a holiday just that tiny bit more chavvy than Butlins. It’s not a week in a
gîte. It is not a long weekend at Moonfleet Manor.
And here in the Capone’s Nightclub at Haven’s Devon Cliffs Holiday Park, Exmouth, this is a supposition being borne out all around us. As the live talents of MP3 hold the stage with their powerful Fame-medley skills (“Dreammaker, heart-breaker . . . People will see me and die!”), the audience shows no sign of going to bed, despite the fact that it is 1am on a Wednesday. And by audience, I mean the swarm of eight-year-olds on the dance floor who, in five minutes’ time, will join MP3 in an alarming mass dance-off of The Cha Cha Slide. Accompanied by Ibiza-style glowstick action.
The even younger audience members, on the other hand, have acknowledged the lateness of the hour. For while their older brothers and sisters party on, the nightclub is strewn with the sleeping bodies of babies and toddlers. To the left, twins asleep in their buggy. To the right, a three-year-old face down across two chairs. Behind me, a toddler resting on a nest of handbags and fleeces under a table.
Faced with the prospect of leaving their sleeping children in a caravan half a mile away, the families have understandably decided to prove just how comfortable a floor can be for the sponge-like bones of the young. Plus, it means that nan and grandad aren’t stuck at home with babysitting duties, and can join in with the drinking of £10, five-pint pitchers of Guinness — and The Cha Cha Slide — too. This is the uniting of the generations. This is the cementing of the family unit.
And this is why we are here. As a family of eight children, home-educated by our working-class, hippy parents, my siblings and I spent half our lives in a caravan in Wales. Our caravan site, to our eternal disappointment, was not a Haven site. It wasn’t really a site, to be honest — just a field with a toilet block, and a drainage problem in the quarter-acre by the gate. There was no Capone’s at Bryn-y-Gors. We did not dance The Cha-Cha Slide at 1am.
Instead, we passed the summer months playing with slugs in the marshy area, hitting each other with sticks, and dreaming of a day trip to the Cambrian Coast Caravan Site in Aberystwyth, which had both a “fun pool” and an on-site chip-shop. We dreamt of the Cambrian Coast in the way East Germans must have dreamt of West Berlin. To us, a camp site with entertainments was the City of Gold. Shangri-la. A less enlightened but far more enjoyable Atlantis.
And so in the way much of your adult life is spent in righting the wrongs of your childhood — see also: dramatic weight loss, having your hair straightened, moving to New York — I have brought all my siblings, now by and large adult, on a Haven Holiday.
For there is not just Capone’s here. There are three pools, two other “entertainment centres”, an amusement arcade, bowling, pool, supermarket, photographic centre, launderette, spa, basketball course, golf, sandy beach and adequate drainage. In fact, this is the second-biggest caravan site in Europe. You couldn’t get any more facilities. In the spa, you can get micro-dermabrasion, oxygen facials and Botox. It’s like Las Vegas built by the Caravan Club.
Given its size, arrival at the site can be a little daunting. The whole valley is filled with super-sized static caravans all staring out to sea, as if waiting for a sign. The queue at reception to check in is truly dispiriting — snaking out of the building, across the forecourt and on to the grass verge.
“Is it always like this?” I ask a passing member of staff.
“Yes — but they love to queue!” she says, brightly. Still, the queue does move incredibly quickly — I get to the check-in desk in under ten minutes — and the whole family excitedly opens the doors on our three neighbouring caravans. The caravan of our childhood had two bedrooms to accommodate ten people, and a semi-broken chemical toilet for “emergencies”, which was situated, by necessity, in the lounge. Anyone using it would have to scream: “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!” until they had finished.
These caravans, on the other hand, are decidedly swish. Three bedrooms (two twins and a double), toilet and separate shower-room, well-appointed kitchen, spotless and luxurious lounge and a welcome pack including wine, coffee, bacon and eggs. There is a mass outbreak of high-fiving. “French coffees” — coffee with a slug of white wine — are served to celebrate, and then everyone decamps to “Sonny Jim’s” bar — slogan, “All the magic of fun!” — to spunk £30 worth of 10ps in the machines.
So while the chav element of Haven is undeniably present — primarily, it has to be said, in us — we discovered, over the course of our week, that for an all-ages holiday, Haven can give CenterParcs a run for its money. And considerably less money, at that. For far less than half what we would have spent on a comparable break at CenterParcs, we had direct access to one of the nicest stretches of beach in East Devon, a lushly appointed £2.3 million spa, a low-key, informative and pleasant farm-park (www.worldofcountrylife.co.uk) literally at the top of the drive, and the kind of peace and friendliness on site that the snobbish (me, before I went) would be surprised about.
Superb article putting a soft 'sh' to the front of the great chav culture. Devon Cliffs Holiday Park rocks!
Agatha Slugg, Tunbridge Wells, Angleland