Burns Farm — Hotel in Great Britain

POINT PROVEN BY RESPONSE May half term break, just returned and feeling mixed emotions about our stay. The positives include a stunning location, showers and toilets to a good standard and usually kept clean and tidy. The camping feilds had a festival vibe to them during the day and the pizza van that visited was amazing. Fire pits are allowed on grass pitches but oddly not on hard standing. Unfortunately following the pattern of negative reviews I have to describe how 'Linda' the owner made me and my family feel. On night 1 after a long day of work, travel and setting up I went to visit my parents on their touring pitch which was 3 pitches away from reception and the toilet block (the owners like to sit in here at night and watch over people as they enter). My two four year olds quickly made friends with two other children camping in this area. It was nice to watch them playing and expending some energy in the fresh air. We were approached on our pitch by a lady not in uniform, no pleasantries or introduction and told that our children can't be running around after 9 pm and that they should be 'winding down'. I asked her if this was a site rule and she assured me it was, fair enough so I brought my children in and read through the site rules, this rule is nowhere to be seen. Day two and we were up and off the site from 11am until 7pm, when we returned my children began to play again, this is what we look for on a camping weekend, I love to see them laughing, playing and exploring. I noticed one of them go into the toilet facilities so I followed, I encourage my children to be independent and trust that they can use a toilet without any fuss. However 'Linda' met me at the entrance, again no hello or greeting of any description, instead in a hostile way she approached me saying "are they your children" I asked who she was and she replied "the owner". She then proceeds to tell me in an aggressive way that my children should not be using toilets alone as they are too young! I wasn't 30 meters behind my child and had followed to provide assistance. She then ordered me to the office telling me that I wasn't supervising my children to the appropriate level and that there had been reports that my children had 'BOMBARDED' other campers with water pistols. I explained that given we were on a camping field and that it was an extremely hot weekend we wanted long sunny days playing in the small paddling pool and that the water guns in question were from Poundland and were incapable of reaching further than a meter. This verbal assault went on for a good 10 minutes before I was ordered to go away and read the rules, as a qualified primary teacher with an early years specialism, I did not appreciate nor welcome parenting advice from a person I had paid a fair amount of money to for a patch of ground and a toilet. Linda has no knowledge of how some children may be neuro diverse and given the current climate how difficult it can be for families to get away for a few days she should not be so condescending. Having spoken to a lot of campers around us before leaving I was unable to find anyone that had an issue with my childrens playful and adventurous nature! Possibly the friendliest and most polite group of young people also told me they experienced prejudice. Given my encounter with the site owner I'm fully expecting a passive aggressive response to this review but if she were to approach it with a professional and business minded way she would take it as constructive feedback and possibly take a customer service or difficult conversations course. My other constructive feedback would include possibly introducing a recreational feild for children to run around as long as their parents see fit, possibly with a play park. Maybe instead of a dog free field an 'adult only' area might fit in with your peace and tranquility vision. Camping field is too far away from the toilets and possibly the addition of an outdoor wash area and composting toilets might improve your offer and sustainability. Possibly the least...

My two friends and I were very much looking forward to staying at this campsite as part of our charity three peaks challenge. We booked this site as a middle check point to recouperate our energy after completing our Ben Nevis hike which unfortunately took much longer than expected.

We realised we wouldn't be able to get to the site before the 9pm cut off point and decided to ring the site to see if they could still accommodate us at a later time. This wasn't possible, and we understood that this was of our own making but we still planned to camp the second night which we had booked weeks in advance for after our Scafell Pike hike.

However, once the lady on the phone learnt that we were not a couple or a family, she was very rude and abrupt making it clear that we were not welcome for our second night stay. She told us that the website and the terms and conditions clearly state that there are no groups allowed. She abruptly stated that we would not be able to claim a refund. This left us disheartened and with what seemed like no place to stay for a second night in a row. It must be said that it is not clear on any page of the website that this is a family and couples only campsite. It is only stated in the terms and conditions which is situated at the bottom of the website in a very small font labeled "Terms". When booking, the website doesn't warn you of this and even allowed me to enter the names, ages and genders of the three people camping, yet we still didn't receive a warning or an email from the campsite prior to our trip to inform us of their policy. Upon actually checking the policy, it turns out that they actually class a group as "MORE THAN THREE PEOPLE" meaning we were within the limit as we were only a three. This means that we were very much misinformed and misguided by the lady on the phone who tried to stop us from fulfilling the second night of our booking. A few reccomendations for this campsite:

1. Make it clear (not only in your terms and conditions) on your website's landing pages that this is a family and couples only campsite and that you won't allow groups of more than three. (Or in our case, three or more) Maybe state it on your home page, or on the booking pages.

2. Check your bookings more closely in order to spot when people have made the very easy mistake (due to the problems in reccomendation 1) of booking your site as a group of more than 3, (or in our case, three or more) and email them to inform them PRIOR to their trip.

3. Ensure your staff are fully aware of your own terms and conditions. As aforementioned we were wrongly told that our party was too big, when the terms and conditions clearly state that MORE THAN 3 people classes as a group. In hindsight we were within our right to stay according to the terms and conditions.

To summarise, we are three hikers who felt discriminated against due to our age and gender (none of us drink alcohol and were not looking to party as the lady assumed) and just needed a place to rest. Our trip was nearly ruined due to the way the situation was handled by the very misinformed lady...

*Apologised for our long review

Disappointing… after looking forward to a relaxing break from our busy professional careers my partner and I thought we would try a different campsite that was recommended to us. We camp most weekends and our initial impression was that the facilities were great , clean and quite impressive but unfortunately this wasn’t enough to sustain the joy of it being the weekend and a new campsite with what followed.

On this evening we bumped into some friends on the campsite and didn’t realise that we were not allowed to socialise due to excessive strict rules.

The evening in question we talked and enjoyed catching up with friends and the interaction of human beings. We live in a digital world where the screen time takes over so wanted to interact with others. After a pleasant evening and abiding by the campsite rules ( or so we thought) we were in bed by 11.30pm. At 9.05am the next day (Saturday) we were woke up by a phone call informing us that a complaint had been made about loud noise and music being played after 9pm from our pitch. Also that we had other pitch members on our pitch which was not allowed. Our music was so low we couldn’t even hear it, it was also raining heavily that evening so not sure how any music was heard. We had no idea that we were loud and no one had spoke to us on the Friday evening to inform us we were loud. Instead waiting till the Saturday morning and complained.

This campsite is next to an extremely busy road so the rain together with the traffic noise would have made it hard to hear us.

We were shocked that a complaint had been against us as we pride ourselves on being considerate and nice polite people. We apologised for breaking the rules. If I am honest we wanted to just leave after this phone call as it felt unfair and we quickly realised when walking round the campsite that no one spoke to anyone or even smiled. I felt quite anxious about it all and felt only one side of the story had been listened to as the only noise was us talking with friends.

I would like to also point out that we had planned to bring our dog and paid for her but then decided not to bring her. When we arrived we realised our pitch was a’ no dogs’ pitch which puzzled us as we had booked prior to arriving. I am now relieved that we didn’t bring her as we would no doubt have got a complaint about that too- which would not have been our fault.

No doubt there will be a detailed response to this review which I will not reply to because one thing that having recently recovered from cancer has taught me, is life is short to dwell on sad moments, you must enjoy and spend time with the amazing people in your life which I intend to do but not at this campsite. It’s a shame because on the surface the campsite looked great . I will certainly not recommend this...