Whitehill Country Park

AS family-friendly sites go, Whitehill Park is a real gem. Located near Paignton the site offers touring and camping pitches in a scenic valley setting. An outdoor swimming pool (and toddlers pool), craft workshop, games rooms and several outdoor play areas, mean that kids have lots to do.

Adults, meanwhile, can enjoy a good meal in the café, while the Hayloft Bar is an upmarket place to enjoy your favourite tipple or just shoot some pool. And don’t forget to leave time for exploring the Bluebell woods. Even if you want a quiet place to pitch, this site delivers.

Located off Stoke Road – best accessed via the A385 between Paignton and Totnes – Whitehill Park is set in a valley and offers 340 pitches. Many of these have electric hook-ups and hardstandings are available.

The entrance to the site is easy to negotiate and leads into a car park area opposite the main cluster of site buildings. The most obvious attraction here – which you’ll walk past on the way to reception – is the outdoor swimming pool. This features two pools – a main pool and a smaller toddler’s pool. Both are surrounded by a wide patio area that gives plenty of room for soaking up the sun.

To the rear of the pool area is the Hayloft café with both indoor and outdoor seating, with the Hayloft Bar being located above this. This offers a decked outside patio area, with the inside of this barn having been converted into an upmarket bar area. This features dark wood polished floors, overhead beams and stone walls – it offers a wide selection of beers, wines and spirits and is undoubtedly the place to be in the evenings (when various live events also take place). There’s also a pool table in here, together with a couple of fruit machines.

A bridge leads across to a second barn area, this houses various different rooms including the Shire craft centre – which allows children to be creative / make a proper mess with paint and craft materials. At the time of our visit some children were eagerly attacking paper cups with splodges of primary-coloured paint.

To the left of this craft area is a country-style shop, this is more of a supermarket than a shop and offers a wide range of groceries, wine, beer and spirits, ice-cream, camping accessories, sun cream, plus newspapers and magazines. The wide range of goods sold here means that you don’t have to leave the site if you don’t want to – it’s always good to have the option.

You'll find lots going on throughout the summer in the Granary Barn - this is where the real fun takes place. From live music to bingo and quiz nights, there is fun to be had by all.

Additional rooms lead off from this main loft section and include one small room containing air hockey, table football and a couple of arcade machines (the massive Ferrari F355 challenge looking particularly appealing). A larger offshoot features a seating area, plus a couple of table tennis tables, a dance-step machine and a couple of motorbike arcade machines. Whichever way you look at it, children are going to love this site.

As well as the outdoor pool, in decent weather there’s also various outdoor play areas for children to charge about on and as the site has plenty of open spaces, there’s lots of room for ball games.

Toilets are located by the main complex of buildings and are of a good standard. There’s also a large laundry room that has lots of washing machines, tumble driers, ironing boards and irons in it, plus the obligatory hand-wash sinks.

Various other toilet blocks are dotted about on site but the flagship one is located at the far end of the site and was only opened in summer 2007. This is an impressive building – if it were a house you’d want to live in it! – and offers first-rate toilets, high-quality vanity units, vast ‘L’-shaped showers, plus disabled and family rooms. Outside is a covered dish-washing area.

The actual pitches themselves are offered on a choice of grass and hardstandings, with all the touring fields being relatively flat – certain pitches may need a bit of tweaking about with the steadies / levelling blocks but that’s about it.

Whitehill is also accepting dogs on site for the first time for the 2011 season - this is just in the low season and not during school holidays (check with the site first at the time of booking).

With plenty of greenery and plenty of trees and shrubs to break up the site, it’s a pleasant place to stay and there’s plenty of space around individual pitches, too. For those seeking a bit of peace and quiet, but who don’t want to sacrifice their creature comforts this site is a good choice.


Contact:
Whitehill Country Park
Stoke Road
Paignton
Devon TQ4 7PF
Tel: 01803 782338

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