By William Coleman
I was born during the October half term holiday way back when in 1987. Since then my family would go to Devon every year to the Sandy Bay Haven holiday park. For the next decade I would spend the October half term at the Sandy Bay site and look forward to the next year as soon as we left to head back to London. The last time we went was on my 10th birthday, and now 20 years on I look back at those fond years to see just how much the caravan holiday has changed over the past 2 decades.
There are so many things that I remember vividly about visiting Devon; spotting the Beast of Bodmin Moor, the live wrestling shows, Crealy Adventure, going down the buzzard swoop slide, the Canonteign Waterfall park and the evening entertainment the park would put on.
Having seen whats on offer now it certainly dwarfs what I had back in the early to mid 90’s. Now there is so much more, a lot of which does not include the human element of entertainment. More rides, slides and arcades. It seems that the live show of an evening and the singing and dancing entertainment is something of the past.
I will never forget arriving late on a Friday evening, half asleep, to find out that there was going to be live wrestling on in the main bar of the entertainment club house. Instantly I woke up and pleaded that we go and watch, there was a bar there so I did not have to convince mum and dad too much after the 4 and a half hour drive. And now there are rides and lots more arcades and even a Starbucks! The pool area has certainly had an upgrade. Now the kids can use mini jet skis and even do SCUBA lessons! A far cry from the freezing October plunge that I used to take, much to the amusement of the family and friends we would go with.
The thing I loved about this site was the large static caravans we would stay in. At the time I had never seen a caravan like it. I was used to the small little ones you would see sitting on people’s drive ways. These were far more glamorous they seemed like luxury small homes. They would have a good size living room/dining room/kitchen combo. Each morning you would get woken up by the sound of a thousand seagulls trampling on the roof, years later I found out that my dad would throw bread on the roof so the seagulls would sweep down and be blamed for waking everyone up. Good work dad. We would all then jump up, have a cooked breakfast and plan where we would go. The ladies would go and do horse riding and the gents would go fishing then at the end of the day we would all go back to the caravan and get ready for the live entertainment.
Now it seems all the activities are based on spending money on rides and attractions. I understand that holiday parks are businesses and to operate they need to make money, but I feel that this sometimes is at the expense of what made everyone fall in love with these sites when we were young. The world moves on and us with it, I guess.
After a 20 year gap there is one thing that has not changed, the locals of the area. Not too far away from the site is the old untouched parts of Exeter. Little squares with traditional tea rooms and the local home made pastie maker who tells you locals stories and spooky yarns. I always loved the human element of the area. There was one cafe called The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe. They made all their cakes in house and were all perfect. The Death By Chocolate was a stand out for sure. A cake as big as the child who ordered it.
All in all it seemed like my half term holidays in Devon were a lot simpler 20 years ago.What would amuse and entertain us as children would now bore the iPad generation to sleep.
