2022 Recap

2022 has been a fantastic year – we’ve welcomed over 50,000 visitors (and their dogs) to enjoy holidays on the Jurassic Coast and celebrated receiving some fantastic awards. However, like all businesses, 2022 has thrown up new challenges and difficulties to overcome. Here’s our recap of everything that’s happened at WDLH this year…

For the first time since 2019, we had a “normal” year, with no Covid-19 lockdowns forcing the parks to close during times we would normally be open. However, the virus was still around and we did temporarily lose team at times whilst they isolated for the protection of other team members and guests. Later on in the year also we experienced the nation-wide staff shortages first-hand and did our best to minimise the impact that this had on our guests, particularly when important deliveries were not received.

2022 has been a bumper year for awards and we’re really proud to have earned some prestigious accolades to add to our collection. We retained our AA Camping & Caravan Awards, with Highlands End earning Platinum and Golden Cap earning a 5* award once again. We achieved more Trip Advisor Traveller’s Choice awards, for Highlands End, Graston Copse, Golden Cap and Eype House.

Locally, at the Bridport Business Awards we won the Green/Eco Business award and the overall Business Of The Year, and the next day were awarded Plastic Free Champion status. The biggest celebrations, however, were had after each round of the regional Tourism awards – having last entered Highlands End in 2019, we decided to enter again this year, and also put in an entry for Golden Cap for the first time. We were thrilled for Highlands to win Gold and Golden Cap to win Silver for Holiday Park of The Year at the Dorset Tourism Awards, and when both parks went on to win the same at the South West Tourism Awards, a big celebration was had!

After launching our WDLH app at the end of 2021, this was the first season we got to see it in action, with almost 10,000 downloads to date. It has helped lots of you find your way around the park, learn more about our facilities, see what’s on in the local area and browse over 220 listings of places to visit including pubs, beaches, attractions, shops and more. We’re still working on it behind the scenes and developing new features to create more ways it can improve the experience of guests on holiday with us and partway through the year we added a Holiday Home sales section where guests can browse the caravans and lodges currently available to buy on our parks.

At the start of the year we ran a competition with the Jurassic Coast Trust to celebrate WDLH raising over £100,000 for them since our partnership began in 2008. The competition to win a weekend break in one of our Luxury Lodges was very popular and brought more attention to the Jurassic Coast Trust’s fantastic work. We’re committed to protecting our natural environment and helping everyone enjoy it, and this year we joined the South West Coast Path Association as Waymakers, helping to protect the path and maintain it for people to continue to use.

We also sponsored a number of local events and supported charities and groups wherever possible, including: Bridport Beer Festival, Jurassic Fields Music Festival, Charmouth School PTFA, Symene Sports Club, Bridport Ladies FC, The Ukraine Appeal, Save The Children, Bridport Pantomime Players, St Catherine’s School, Julia’s House Children’s Hospice and many more.

This year we welcomed a range of local takeaway food vans to Highlands End, Graston Copse and Golden Cap, and even had regular visits from a mobile barber van at Highlands towards the end of the Summer! We’re always looking for simple things we can do to improve the experience of guests on the parks and these vans proved popular with visitors and locals.

We made a number of improvements to our holiday parks at the start of the year including the below upgrades:

Highlands End:

• Changed some grass pitches to gravel to provide more opportunities for year-round touring
• Upgraded our webcam pointing towards West Bay – take a look
• Added lighting and heating to a covered outdoor seating area at Martin’s Bar & Restaurant
• Created a new boules pitch at Martin’s Bar & Restaurant
• Replaced some of our hire caravans with newer models
• Made improvements to our wildlife lake and added an improved footpath and picnic area
• Installed a secure ANPR barrier as the next stage of our contactless check in program
• Put up new bird boxes and gave our bug hotel a serious upgrade

Golden Cap:

• Upgraded some of our gravel pitches
• Introduced a new type of glamping pod – The Seatown Pod
• Replaced two of our Classic Camping Pods with the larger Classic Plus model and replaced the others with a newer version of the Classic Pod
• Welcomed the caravans ready to be sold on our brand new South Alberlon development – have a look at what’s available
• Replaced some of our hire caravans with newer models
• Our fishing lake has had a full stocktake done by a specialist company and we will be restocking the lake with lots of fish in time for the start of next season
• This winter we’re awaiting delivery of a brand new Lodge which will be available to hire during 2023

Graston Copse:

• Created 5 new gravel pitches with electric hook-up, so touring caravans and motorhomes have more pitch types to choose from
• Upgraded the Recycling Bay and moved the car charging point to a better location allowing space for a Motorhome service point.
• Changed and upgraded some of the park signage – it looks so much better!

Larkfield:

• We welcomed new Holiday Home Owners to the park and Jurassic Retreat – we now have just one new luxury lodge available – take a look
• We expanded our David Bellamy conservation scheme at Larkfield, with a new wildlife / dog walk, on park planting and bird boxes.

Sandyholme:

• Opened a new camping meadow – find out more
• Created a new boules pitch next to our picnic area
• We revitalised our wildlife lake by removing silt, neatening the edges and installing a new pump, making it a better habitat for the ducks and wild birds that live there.
• Installed a new livestream webcam for our wildlife lake that will be going live soon – watch this space
• This winter we’re creating 14 new grass electric pitches in our Meadow camping field

Across the parks, we planted over 2,700 trees last winter, as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy Initiative, with many more planned for this winter. We also upgraded all our electric vehicle chargers with newer, more efficient models and have pledged that all new company vehicles and equipment will be electric. We installed additional defibrillators at all parks – it’s fantastic to have them available for our park guests, team and anyone nearby should they be needed.

Perhaps the most exciting development this year was the purchase of Eype House Holiday Park, our neighbours right next door to Highlands End. Eype House is a small park with hire caravans, 2 glamping pods and camping/campervan pitches that we managed as it was for this season. It has fantastic sea views towards West Bay and the Isle of Portland and is a real hidden gem. We’re looking forward to making improvements and integrating it more within the WDLH family over the next few years and have a number of exciting projects underway there already. This takes our total number of Holiday Parks to 6! Each one has its own personality and features that make it unique – all of the parks have regular guests who return year after year to their favourite park, and we’re pleased we can offer so much choice to our guests.

As well as growing our number of holiday parks, we also grew the number of SPAR stores in the business when we purchased the SPAR and Post Office in Chideock, which joins the two SPARs that have been successfully operating at Highlands End and Golden Cap since 2021. The additional store came with Post Office services which required lots of learning on our part but has been an incredibly useful asset to have. We’re thrilled to be providing this much-needed service in the Chideock community.

Our fantastic Holiday Home sales team sold 70 new and preowned caravans across our parks this year, welcoming a number of new owners who have already begun to enjoy Dorset and become part of our wonderful community of Holiday Home Owners. There are currently a number of new and pre-owned holiday homes available at Highlands End, Golden Cap, Graston Copse and Larkfield Holiday Parks if you are considering investing in a Holiday Home.

Our Three Peaks Challenge remained popular and we have seen a few new names on the leader board and loved seeing all the photos you have sent in. If you’ve not tried this walk yet, we do recommend it, even if you’d prefer to take your time and enjoy the views rather than racing round. It’s an incredibly scenic route that takes in Thorncombe Beacon, Golden Cap and Colmer’s Hill, and can be started from Highlands End, Eype House or Golden Cap Holiday Parks.

This year was a record for our lambing on the farmland surrounding Highlands End, with just shy of 350 lambs being born. We are preparing for a busy winter on the farm as we look to carry out a range of maintenance work on our hedges and fences. We have also extended the barn to allow 200 ewes a little more space for 2023 lambing which should start in April. We also welcomed Trojan our second Alpaca and we hope in to see a few more arriving early in 2023.

 

2022 brought with it some extreme weather that challenged us in multiple different ways! We battled through Storm Eunice in February, and our maintenance team were incredibly busy afterwards, repairing roofs, fences, deckings and signposts which were all damaged in the gale-force winds, as well as digging up felled trees. Later in the year we had to postpone our Thatcher’s Cider Day at Martin’s Bar & Restaurant due to an extreme thunderstorm which resulted in many businesses in Bridport being flooded. Thankfully the rescheduled event went ahead as planned, as we also experienced some spectacular heatwaves in the Summer, and the Martin’s beer garden was packed!

Throughout the year, Martin’s Bar & Restaurant also hosted a number of other successful events, including lots of live music, children’s discos and entertainment, themed evenings, private parties and more. Our Sunday Roast On The Coast Carvery and Tuesday Curry Night remained popular and we’re currently hosting a number of festive Carveries for local businesses celebrating Christmas. Our annual Maker’s Market was a huge success and even beat last year’s total, raising £2,360 for Julia’s House Children’s Hospice, an organisation we’re really proud to support.

Next door to Martin’s, Highlands End Leisure Club went from strength to strength, with membership numbers steadily growing throughout the year, and the continuation of our popular Swim School with Penny Yarnold and all the other activities and classes available. We launched a Member of The Month scheme where each month our team choose a member they want to reward with a voucher for Martin’s Bar & Restaurant. This person could be a dedicated swimmer who comes in regularly, someone who has smashed their personal targets or just a friendly face. At the start of Winter we launched a new 5 month membership option, aimed at those who prefer swimming in the sea in the Summer, and this package proved incredibly popular, with huge numbers of people signing up. Our partnership with New Body Fitness Bridport continued, and our members and holidaymakers enjoyed having access to their gym facilities, whilst their members benefitted from the use of our facilities too.

Our 2022 Photo Competition recently came to a close, and with over 1300 entries this year, it was tough choosing our finalists for our Facebook followers to pick our winner from. The lucky winner was a lovely young family who took a spectacular sunset photo from the back of their campervan parked at Highlands End, looking towards Eype House and Thorncombe Beacon. They’ll win £250 to spend on a holiday (or holidays) next year, and we’ll be opening our 2023 competition soon.

As all families and business will have found recently, we too have experienced great uncertainty regarding rising energy prices and the cost of living increasing. This unfortunately resulted in a delay releasing the dates for 2023 bookings, however the system is now live and we’re pleased to be taking bookings for all our parks. The easiest way to make a booking is online.

We’re still open for our last few guests of 2022 in the Lodges at Golden Cap and the Lodges, Apartments and Bungalows at Highlands End. Plus our gravel and hard-based pitches at Highlands are open all-year round too, so it’s not too late to make a last minute booking for your touring caravan or motorhome. Find out more about Winter Breaks here.

As we look towards next year there are a number of exciting developments taking place behind the scenes, including a revolutionary new software that will streamline our admin processes and allow guests to check in online and manage parts of their booking easier. We’re also planning more updates for our app and even a brand new website!

We’d like to thank all our team members, local suppliers and business partners for their hard work this year, as well as all our Holiday Home Owners and everyone who’s stayed with us this year, plus anyone who’s managed to make it to the bottom of this rather extensive blog post! We hope you have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and we can’t wait to see you in 2023!