Riverside Lakes

Peaceful

An amazing experience. Matt and his partner. Will definitely be back, I came little unorganised so I had to cut the trip short.

Riverside Lakes

A great site, lovely helpful people and well run. Could not fault anything.

Noisy

This is a lovely, well looked after campsite and the owners are very friendly. However, I booked it on the basis of it being advertised as a quiet campsite. Their website actively deters anyone looking to party or generally make lots of noise, and says offenders will be asked to leave. It asks for quiet after dark and no noise at all after 11, which sounded perfect. This was very far from the reality though. I have camped in many many campsites and this was right up there in terms of the noisiest of them. Lots of partying, large noisy groups, kids screaming, yelling and running riot all over the campsite right up to and past 11pm. There was even the national anthem yelled drunkenly out shortly before midnight. Generally lots of campsite noise past dark which in no way could be claimed to be 'quiet'. No one was being unpleasant, just not adhering to the campsite rules, which were not being enforced in any way - or if they were, no one paid any attention. There were a host of noisy groups - some exceptionally noisy. When I spoke with the owner the following morning, whilst she was apologetic, she told me that weekends can get very noisy and that their regulars like to play games until late. I found this quite unsatisfactory - basically she was saying it wasn't a one-off but an ongoing occurrence which they are aware of, and yet still the site emphasises on being a quiet space. We were offered an extra free night as compensation, but really, if you've booked holiday for a certain length of time, this is unlikely to be possible and wasn't for us. A refund would have been more appreciated, but wasn't offered.

Site's response

Thank you for your feedback. As it states on our listing, we are a friendly, family run campsite, we welcome families and quiet groups onto site, most of which can be regulars, but it was lovely to see a lot of new faces this year. Unfortunately noise is sometimes out of our control, as we cannot always hear after we've done our walk rounds, which I apologised for when you came and spoke to me about the next day. Unfortunately, you were pitched in amongst a group which had booked most of their pitches online as well as some bell tents. We managed to catch up with them the next day and they apologised for any noise that was made. I informed you on the morning you came to speak to me that sometimes, Fridays can be a little noisier through the holidays due to the children onsite being overexcited and they play games of hide and seek which we make a point of calming usually around 9.30pm - 10pm. We also mentioned we clean the shower block around 11pm and walk round to calm the noise from adults, sometimes after this time, the noise can creep up once we are indoors. We have phone numbers on the door for any problems onsite. I didn't see it necessary to offer a refund, nor were you leaving site early because of the situation. I think next time, as you can see from our reviews, be best for you to book at quieter times of year, maybe not in the school holidays. To add, and pardon me for fighting my corner slightly, I do believe a camper who arrived when most campers had gone home, was pitched next to you for the evening, and she text us to move because of noise complaints from yourselves early afternoon. Kind regards :)