Why a lodge?

Having enjoyed many happy family holidays in North Cornwall, courtesy of my parent’s holiday home, we did miss it greatly when it came to an end.

Indeed, we looked into moving entirely from Derby to Cornwall. For one reason or another, it became clear that this would be problematic, impractical, or impossible. Had we been retiring to Cornwall this might have been a little easier, perhaps we will revisit this option at a later date!

So then came an examination of buying a holiday home, a halfway house as it were. Well, there are some fantastic places in Cornwall at a reasonable cost, and some reasonable places at fantastic prices, but none hit the spot. And in any case, we were aiming for a cash purchase. Having dispensed with a mortgage on both our properties some years ago, returning to indebtedness had little appeal.

And there we were, dreams unfulfilled.

Until one day I chanced upon a Johnny Vegas comedy ‘Home from Home’ set in a holiday home park. For some reason, I hadn’t even entertained the notion of a non-bricks & mortar accommodation, perhaps because I associated mobile homes and caravans in a collectively negative way. But, notwithstanding the rather grotesquely-drawn characters in the TV show, I was intrigued by the sight of these holiday homes looking like, well, ‘home’. And this triggered some investigation into what this holiday lodge lark was all about.

To my surprise, these things were far from caravans, indeed were large, roomy and very well fitted out. And they also ticked the box of being affordable, at a stretch. I looked at various sites in Cornwall and it quickly became apparent that anything that had sea views would be well out of our league, others were feasible. And since we had been perfectly content for years with a small cottage with basic facilities adjacent to a small town, we didn’t need to set our sights much higher. After all, this was a base for Cornish holidays, not a house to live in year-round.

And so it was that I concentrated attention on a rural site called Juliot’s Well, not far from the North Cornwall coast, laying between Delabole and Camelford. Quiet location, countryside views, easy access to our old haunts, and holiday lodges that were very well appointed. The site was being expanded and improved, and brand new lodges could be made to order.

Haunted by the lingering presumption that holiday lodges, static homes, would be on the one hand ‘naff’ and on the other ‘caravan-ish’, we would have to give them a tryout, prior to purchase. Actually, it turns out these things are surprisingly expensive to hire but the park staff were very accommodating and offered us a free break to give it a go. Well, they knew what they were doing, and we were so taken with the whole concept (even in cold and wet February) a deposit for purchase passed hands that very weekend.

There just remained the question of which lodge to go for and after a visit to the Camping and Caravan Show at the NEC we plumped for a brand new design for 2019 and did a deal that gave us a discount for buying the very lodge that was on display at the show, to be trucked from the show at its close directly to site in Cornwall.

And so the adventure began.