A Fur Coat (ish) Caravan trip 

My children have 9 weeks holiday over the summer break. Yes, you read that correctly.  Nine whole endless weeks of lost freedom for me! It really ends up being 10 weeks as I lose that freedom around the beginning of July when the schools that the little blossoms attend go into a frenzy with end of term events. Parents are expected to attend all these events in the last week cutting into even more 'me' time. When you are not attending these events, you are running around like a mad hatter buying teachers' presents and tying up any household admin that will not get a look in for 10 weeks. You may think me callous and selfish, but the joke does run rather thin by the time the ten weeks are up. Even the kids are begging to get back to school. What to do in those endless weeks? As I don't own a villa in Tuscany or have a boat moored off a remote Greek island, I have to think of cheap and cheerful ways to spend the Summer.

This year I came up with a simple yet cunning plan. A cheap(ish) caravanning holiday at a quintessential British holiday park! This would fill in 1 week of the impending 9 weeks. Being Australian, the holiday camp concept is foreign to me. Apart from watching The Who's rock opera, Tommy, I had no idea what holiday parks/camps entailed! I chose Park Resorts at Camber Sands as I know that that the beach is gorgeous, long and sandy. I booked a Gold Standard caravan (I tried and failed to secure the Platinum Standard one) with three bedrooms and two shower rooms! Wow, I thought, not bad for £500 for a week. How very No Knickers of me! I even persuaded two friends and their kinder to join me.

We decided that we would need to pack some Fur Coat items to soften the blow. We packed enough champagne (See my blog on skiing) to see us through the week and then some. Friend number 1 picked up some juicy cuts of meats from Mohen's butchers in SW11 to ensure that we did not have to resort to park catered food. With our hearts in our mouths and a sense of adventure, we loaded up the cars and drove down to the Sussex coast. Now how can I sum up the Park Resorts for my trusty readers? The place is chocka block full of caravans of all shapes and sizes. Row upon row of caravans greeted us as you pulled up. We made our way to reception and were given keys along with detailed instructions of how to find our caravans amongst the labyrinth of other caravans. They also provided us with complimentary passes to the entertainment complex! Now we were in for a treat there. The EC consists of a casino, a bar area, restaurant, a shop and a cabaret/band area. There is also a pool, an outside eating area, a sports court and a playground.

After finding our caravans and settling in, the children decided to play football on the sports court. This exercise ended unsuccessfully with the children being threatened with footballs and sworn at by the local kids. As it turns out, there are quite a few permanent caravan dwellers. These children were something else. After launching the football like it was a rocket at our kids' stomachs, they told Friend number 1's child to "Get out of goal you F…ing loser or there will be another football in your face. You loser". Nice one. Needless to say the kids left and sought refuge back at the caravans.

Later that evening, we downed a few glasses of French bubbly and decided to hit the cabaret bar. We arrived during the children's entertainment segment and were greeted with a packed house. A slightly overweight man with a paunch was entertaining the troops with his young athletic female sidekicks. I worked out that paunchy man's job was to banter with another man dressed up as a talking dinosaur and put down his athletics sidekicks. He also made a few adult asides that went straight over the kids' heads. The adults however loved these jokes!

Next day, we hit the pool area. The pool was full of our tattooed brethren who clearly needed to diet immediately or risk heart disease and diabetes. They swam round and round the moving whirlpool for hours on end. The haircuts were choice. One child was sporting a closely shaved haircut. The lower part of his haircut had intricate patterns engraved into it. Lovely. The next day, we decided to venture out of the park and down to the beach. We would have done this before except that the weather had been so atrocious (it being the BBQ Summer that the Met Office had promised) that we were forced to stay within the confines of the camp. We made our way to the beach and spent a beautiful 9 hours in the sunshine.

Look, to be fair, we did have a great week. The kids loved it and we spent it quaffing champagne and eating yummy food with some great friends. Would I venture back there again? Maybe….as long as my friends accompanied me for the adventure! Signing off,   Fur Coat