Club Motorhome Bloggers

Well, we've finished for the summer, the last 6 weeks at our second location. We feel that having seen it through to the end we probably won't be doing it again!

The campsite for our last 6 weeks was quite large and run by the owners who work full time at it. One other warden couple covered maintenance, odd jobs, pitching arrivals, reception, shop etc. - our duties solely revolved around cleaning.

Well, no-one can accuse us of sitting on our laurels! 

After quitting the job in Cornwall we were a bit down, but mainly because of sitting back and reflecting over the recent events. Although we were bucked up a bit by comments by friends and fellow members of Club Motorhome and also offers to park up on their drives should we need somewhere - Huge thanks to all! Caroline got back onto the internet and looked at couple of campsite job finder type websites and found a likely looking position in Norfolk of all places, so ideal for seeing the family before we do eventually head off into Europe again.

I telephoned the site and had a chat with the owner who sounded very positive and he subsequently emailed some details of the job to us. I returned our CV and said that we would be interested should they wish to interview us.

Nothing more happened for a day and we thought that was it - but no worries, we'd just go and see the folks and forget about work for the time being.

As we were packing to leave the site our mobile rang and it was the Norfolk site owner saying that he was pleased to offer us the job and gave us a start date and an invitation to visit beforehand to look around and iron out any queries that we may have.

A long, tedious and thoroughly boring story about matters so petty you wouldn't believe led us to the point of saying 'Enough!' on Friday - so I won't go into minor details.

We're very fortunate to be doing this work by choice rather than necessity otherwise such an outcome would have left us in the lurch. We've actually enjoyed the job as previously posted and haven't minded helping out with whatever jobs were necessary to make the campsite work properly. The problem has been in the form of one of the other workers who is known to be a moaner and somewhat of a difficult character. Unfortunately we have had to share our duties with this person and have been regularly undermined in our efforts.

This culminated in an official (friendly) meeting to get the matter sorted over a cup of coffee and biscuits, at which the other party (and husband) walked out in a huff refusing to discuss any issues. Management were appalled apparently but not prepared to make any further efforts to resolve the issues.

Anyway, rather than continue to work in an unpleasant atmosphere which basically casted a cloud over this otherwise lovely environment we decided to be the ones to quit as the others were more senior and solidly installed in the warden's lodge and obviously weren't affected by their own behaviour - I guess we gave the management an easy way out.

We've been offered the opportunity to stay on 'camped' as long as we like but we've felt a couple of days is long enough and we're moving on tomorrow - a burden lifted!

I imagine a warden's role may vary between different sites and the facilities they offer.

In our case this holiday park is quite spread out (36 acres) and caters for lots of tourers with a choice of grass and hardstanding pitches. There are also static holiday homes and a few luxury lodges. There is a shop/cafe and an outdoor swimming pool. The site has quite a few awards to its credit so its very important to keep standards high.

Our own roles centre on cleaning and maintenance of the facilities and the regular shift hours concentrate on the toilet and shower blocks which are in 2 separate areas of the site plus a motorhome service point, chemical disposal points, laundry room and kitchen.

There are 4 shifts in a day with one of them being the main cleaning session. First shift is an early walk around checking that all is tidy from the night before, anything that needs putting right is done so. Late morning is the main cleanup when the whole facilities are worked through in systematic order. Late afternoon sees another walk around tidying anything as necessary and the late shift is a mini cleanup depending on how it all looks.

We share these shifts so only do two of these shifts each day except when the other couple are on their days off when we do the lot.

A slight change of direction for my blog....

This summer caromac and I have become..... campsite wardens!

We normally spend a lot of each year touring in our motorhome and a lot of the year is spent in Spain but there's always an annual trip to the UK for MOT and service etc (and to visit family and friends of course) which avoids the hottest times when in southern areas. Well this year we decided to spend the whole of the summer in the UK and thought we would try incorporating our motorhome interests into this plan.

I thought I would blog about our experience because we have found out by friends' reactions to our plans, that a lot of people seem to think it would be an ideal occupation for them too but not many actually progress to doing it - so I'll tell it how it is, to offer encouragement (or discouragement) to others  .

A couple of months ago Caromac drafted a suitable CV for us as a couple and emailed it to all the campsite job vacancies that we could find - we ignored the ones that offered just a free pitch in return for work, we intended to actually earn a living while doing this!