Haven Holiday 2016: Day One – First Impressions

First Impressions of the Haven Site

Having an electric vehicle is really handy sometimes. There’s a whole list of benefits that make them worthwhile but the range can still be a real challenge. This weekend we’re staying at the Wild Duck Holiday Park (part of Haven) near Great Yarmouth. In order to get there we had to stop a couple of times to top up the charge on our Renault Zoe. We eventually arrived about 10:30pm last night. We’d spent the last hour of the journey trying to get from one charging point in the next hoping that we would have enough charge to get to the site. In the end we had to chance it and get to the site. I think the plan is to chat to the Haven team and see if there happens to be a charging point on site, if not then to call out the recovery team to take Chris and the car to the nearest available charging point so that he can get it charged up – we think it could be McDonalds, in which case he could probably time it with elevenses and nurse a cup of coffee until the car is fully (or at least half) charged.

Renault Zoe

After reception closes, you can check in with the security guard at the main gate. The gentleman who looked after us on arrival was lovely and friendly. He double checked that we had the right caravan key and also gave us the welcome pack that had various bits of information in it along with our passes for a lot of the facilities.

He gave us really clear instructions of how to find our caravan. It was really easy to find and actually we’re directly opposite a couple of the main buildings – it means there is some background noise from people leaving the pub/restaurant but it’s not too bad and I’m sure once they kick out it will quiet down properly.

We got all our stuff unloaded into the caravan while Chris worked on getting Jaxon into bed. We have a three bedroom caravan which was really handy as I’m sure Our Sidekick wouldn’t want to have to share with Jaxon! The master bedroom has a double bed then the other two have twin beds. One of the twin rooms had both the beds made up whereas the other room had neither beds made up which did mean we had to move some of the bedding from the furthest room into the middle room so that Jaxon is next door to us. It was great that the beds were already made up but it would have been possibly better if we could have made up the twin room ourselves maybe. We’d brought the duvet cover and blanket from Jaxon’s bed at home so he was lovely and snug in his temporary bed.

While Chris continued with bedtime I sorted out putting things like the cereal in the kitchen cupboards and got the kettle on. We were all a bit tense and needed to calm down a bit. I found a home for Jaxon’s bowl and plate only to realise that I didn’t bring any of his toddler cutlery – if we’re out and about I might purchase another set – it doesn’t always use it but it’s good to encourage him.
(It’s actually now 23:40 as I write this and the noise from the people outside has now died down so actually it’s nice and quiet – just me typing on the laptop and the buzz of the fridge).

Once Chris had got Jaxon settled he figured out how to put the heating on. It wasn’t necessarily needed but as the windows had been left open it was kind of nippy in the caravan and would be better for us all not to be freezing!

I sat reading the information and having a look to see what groups were available for us. For Jaxon the only group seems to be the Sing and Sign group in the morning but I’m not entirely sure he will sit still long enough for that especially as he normally gets really grumpy during the song bit at PlayPeople but we’ll see what happenes. There’s a football academy thing at lunchtime but Our Sidekick is too old for it (it’s up to 16 years and he’s now 17). At 17 he definitely seems to be in a bit of a limbo when it comes to the available activities. However it does turn out that we are close enough to one of the restaurants that we might be able to get an Internet connection – I did try it last night but it just kept dropping out. It’s showing as full signal but I think we might be sort of on the edge of the signal range and so that’s why it’s not working very well.

So, so far the first impressions are good, it’s a nice clean and tidy caravan, hopefully once the heating has been on a bit longer it will warm up and we’ll be a little happier and less stressed after a good nights rest.

Not a sponsored post. Just talking about our adventures to Haven’s Wild Duck Holiday Park in Belton nr Great Yarmouth.