Clarach Bay Holiday Village — Hotel in Great Britain

Initially we thought it looked like the facilities were going to be very good, unfortunately, after a day here, we began to see the problems start to appear. There are places to eat and drink, but beware if you on a vegan diet (some are for medical reasons not just personal choice), you will struggle, unless you can survive on fried chips. The staff are, without exception, pleasant,. but seem lacking in best practice and efficient organisation. Another point to remember is the closing time for the amusements, pizza and bar and ice cream/crepes parlour, which close around 9pm, even on a Friday night. That said, if it's not busy, it makes sense. The entertainment area is set up like a pub/show room, but disabled access is complex and frankly, prohibitive, due to the system of having a locked gate at the ramped entrance, which requires the attention of a member of staff to deal with. This can involve getting from one side if the building, to the other, AFTER discovering the locked gate! This is also the case for dog owners, who despite the boast of being 'dog friendly', dogs cannot enter any building! The Show Boat restaurant has very confusing opening times, bearing little resemblence to their advertised schedules. For example 'Sunday Roast Dinners' are clearly advertised online as being available from 12:30pm to 2:30pm, however when you get there (12:15pm), it's closed and, according to a member of staff, doesn't open until 5pm! Not really customer oriented service and the menu is not particularly expansive, nor inclusive. The chips are good though! I would suggest that they stock some non-milk as alternatives for tea/coffee drinkers with vegan/vegetarian diets, simply pointing to the pizza shop and saying that they have some, seems a little short sighted for the sake of a £1.50 carton! There is a small convenience campsite shop, which, for obvious reasons, cannot possibly stock a huge range, but what it does have is a decent small selection of snack foods, drinks, toys, gifts, surf wear etc. Great if you don't want pizza or fish n chips. Unfortunately for those of you that require alcoholic refreshments for your caravan or lodge, you won't find any here, so stock up in Aberystwyth! Another nuisance was discovering that the gate at the beach entrance was locked at 5pm on a Saturday evening, this was unexpected, especially as we followed the sat navigation directions we had used the previous day, without a problem. Once you enter the park roads, you are confronted with a series of extremely harsh speed bumps, they are made of hard rubber and are very harsh on car suspensions, especially as most vehicles will be filled with passengers and luggage, increasing the chance of damage, even at less than 5mph. Also take care at the main entry junction, where the road marking is that of a one way exit, it is not one way! The caravan we had was by no means, one of the best we've ever stayed in. There were several things amiss, amongst which were the gas cooker and fire not lighting, (obvious possible hazard there), black mould on one of the curtains and one drinking glass left with a large crack in it. The expected response will be that we should have mentioned it to the reception, my answer would be, that when we found the issues, reception was closed and we were not able to get to reception over the following 48hrs, so we didn't worry about it, but should those issues have been picked up during preparing the caravan, prior to giving us access, maybe I'm expecting too much? One last observation (at the moment), the site clearly advertise the 'quiet time' from 9pm, a great policy, especially for young (or older) families with tired members, however, this is completely undermined by the deafening (young children are really uncomfortable with it) volume produced by the 'Show Boat' venue, which disturbs the quiet for at least 250m all around. There is plenty to enjoy here, not least, the fantastic sunsets and wonderful scenery and like I mentioned earlier, all of the staff are very polite and...

We arrived at Clarach Bay Village on Monday after booking back in October last year, and honestly, it was one of the worst holiday experiences we’ve ever had.||From the start, the communication was poor and misleading. We made it very clear over the phone that we were travelling from Northern Ireland with a motorbike trailer and dogs, and needed a caravan with parking space and that was genuinely dog-friendly. We were advised to book the Silver Plus, being told it was perfect for pets. We checked the caravan photos online at the time and thought it looked suitable. However, since then the website has been updated, and it’s clear the information we were given was false and misleading. We were never told that our caravan would have no driveway or decking, which made managing our dogs and trailer impossible in reality.||When we arrived, we were hit with a strong, disgusting smell of dog urine inside the caravan. The sofa was heavily stained and filthy, clearly never properly cleaned after previous pets stayed there. The bedding was stained and dirty too. When we asked for replacements, we were flat out told no fresh bedding was available. Eventually, after two days, one lone set of bedding was brought out—for a caravan that sleeps five people! This level of basic cleanliness and care is absolutely unacceptable.||The kitchenware was disgusting. The pots and pans were greasy, the glasses were grimy and “rotten,” and we even found a pizza tray with old, dried-on pizza still stuck to it. We had no choice but to spend hours bleaching, hoovering, and cleaning every surface ourselves before we could even consider using the caravan. Even the hoover was full, jammed, and unusable—it was like they didn’t care at all.||Outside the caravan was no better. There were rabbit droppings scattered around, and seagull droppings everywhere—which were clearly not cleaned before our arrival. To make things worse, seagulls had made nests on the roof of the caravan and began noisily waking us up every morning at 5am sharp as soon as the sun rose. The relentless bird noise made sleeping impossible, leaving us exhausted.||We were offered a different caravan for Thursday, but when we went to arrange the move on Wednesday, we were told it had been sold to someone else, with zero communication or apology. This lack of respect and professionalism was shocking.||The clubhouse food situation was another disappointment. The menu claimed food was served until 9.45pm, but to our surprise it closed at 8.30pm—meaning on our first night, after a long day of travel, we had nowhere to eat. Later in the week, the food was only average at best.||The seafront café was frustrating too. I asked for a baked potato without mayo, and was told it wasn’t possible—only to later realise they did offer that option. I requested a takeaway but was told the salad couldn’t be taken out. Then, to confuse things further, they gave me crisps instead of salad. I also ordered a tuna melt baguette, and when I got back, I saw they had made both the baguette and baked potato without mayo, even though I never asked for that. The baked potato was overcooked, and the skin was so hard it was completely inedible.||Most worrying of all, two people in our group ended up with bites all over their bodies—consistent with bed bug bites. This is absolutely unacceptable and raises serious concerns about the cleanliness and hygiene standards at this site.||The only positives we found were the beautiful view and the ice cream parlour on the seafront, which was a rare bright spot during our stay.||Overall, the entire holiday was ruined by poor hygiene, shocking cleanliness and misleading information. We felt let down at every step, and it’s clear this place does not care about its guests or maintaining basic standards.||We will never return to Clarach Bay Village, and we would strongly advise others to look elsewhere if you want a holiday without stress, discomfort, and...

We've just stayed here during half term in a privately rented caravan (which was 5*), so for the sake of this review i am just talking about the site here. Initially we entered via Google maps recommendations which was down a tight single track road, and we arrived at a beach with absolutely no signage of a caravan site and lots of concrete bollards. We found an open gate and decided to chance that this was the correct site and started driving through it. Although I haven't stayed on a caravan site since I was a child, I remembered that one being very well sign posted with "you are here" boards scattered around the site. There are non here and all I was equipped with was a poor resolution image which when zoomed in was difficult to read and half the caravans you couldn't see the numbers on. The speed humps are crippling and I agree with others that they're a nightmare to navigate when your car is fully loaded with stiffer or lower suspension, but I do get why they're there as the roads can get busy and there are no footpaths when walking around with children and dogs. As others have said, it's a dog friendly place, yet non of the buildings allow dogs. So when we walked down one evening with the dog for a treat meal instead of cooking, and a plan to use the arcades, I ended up having to come all the way back with the dog (we were right the other end of the park) as it was windy and smokey in the outdoor area. So essentially all you can do with a dog here is leave the dog in the caravan or walk off the site or on the beach. We went to use the amusements after tea, after realising that it would be our only chance since we would normally have the dog with us when we visit the beach, but at 6.30 ish we were told they were closing! One morning the children went down with their grandad to play on the karts (which broke down) and get an ice cream, but grandad reported back that the ice cream staff member was rather unhelpful in giving change (to use on the karts) and then mumbled when he came back and wanted to buy ice creams! The shop was limited so I recommend a good shop elsewhere before you get here, especially if you plan to cook your own food or enjoy an alcoholic drink in your caravan! That also shut when it wanted and not as advertised. I appreciate October isn't the busiest time but it did feel on occasions like we were busy interrupting the staffs phone time when we wanted to buy or use things. We only had one meal on site and although some of the things weren't available, the food wasn't bad. I read that people are asked to be quiet after 9pm, but there were plenty of people walking past our caravan loudly, shouting and running about at almost midnight (obviously not the sites fault). The location is lovely with some nice views, and a nice pebbly/shingly beach. It was quiet in October half term but I imagine it would quickly fill up in the summer! There are a couple of small kids parks on site and I can't fault the cleanliness of the site and how well it's maintained regarding the ground works. I did read that the basketball court got locked at 7.30 so for older children I'm not sure what they could do but certainly for under 10s there's a lot to keep them entertained. The walks are not advertised (though with nothing else to do with dogs, they should be!) but we enjoyed walking the cliff path to Aberystwyth which was only around 40 minutes. At the top you can get on the cliff railway or enjoy their cafe, bowling, crazy golf etc. There are also plenty of other walks to do so for the more outdoorsy people this is...