What is the worst holiday you have had?

[TwinklyFawn]

I will start. In 2023 i went to the haven caravan park in Berwick. I stupidly forgot to pack a shower mat and i slipped while getting out of the shower. Anyway i had to phone an ambulance as i could not put any weight on my right leg. At the hospital the doctor asked me to stand up. I could put a bit of weight on my leg but i fell again when i tried to walk. My knee just gave way. I still shudder when i think about this holiday.

I love berwick caravan park ! But we never use the onsite facilities, it is simply a place to sleep.

Worst holiday, Ayrshire 2023 Easter.

Trying to convince my husband to enjoy camping as much as I do. ( I normally take the kids solo) he finally agreed to a long weekend.
It rained and rained and rained , was about 2C the whole weekend. Pitch was a mud bath. We had a argument putting the tent up. It normally takes me 20minutes solo no problems. With "help" it was over an hour, everyone drenched and mudsoaked.
I remember him just sat there huddled in every item of clothing he had absolutely miserable.
I still love camping, but he has never tried again.

@TwistedWonder Danair AKA Dan Dare. They seemed to spend the late 1970s flying into Spanish mountains.

https://www.danairremembered.com/other-incidents.php

I live in a different country to my son, and when he and his girlfriend come to visit and they stay at mine, we all do spend a lot of time together. I expect this and he also expects this, If they want to just drop by and see me once or twice, then they need to pay for their own separate accommodation and flights. They have other holidays during the year where they can do their own thing. Having said that, I do take them around to see places, and he now has his own car here, so they go off for the day on their own, but we eat out together most evenings.

Two spring to mind, the first was a holiday to Cornwall where we stayed in a freezing cold caravan/mobile home thing where when we arrived found it infested with blue bottles, the reception gave us a can of fly spray and left us to get on with it! DD started teething and we spent one night there and left because it was grim. Never stayed in a caravan since.

The second was a trip to Tunisia where we were injured on an excursion when the horse and carriage we were in flipped onto its roof after the driver tried to turn a sharp corner at a gallop (whole other story) I was knocked unconscious and had to be rushed to hospital along with another lady who was badly cut and bleeding profusely

Sun £9.50 holiday. Stony broke due to nursery fees. I treated us to an 'upgrade' to include a microwave in the caravan. Woken up at 3am by a couple having a physical fight right by our caravan about a metre from our heads. I listened for a bit to see if the woman needed help but she was giving just as good as she got!

@Givemestrength1000 Not knowing them well enough (or at all in the case of three couples) probably didn't help. They all seemed to know each other in loosely connected ways.

Probably also sticking to our guns and refusing to sleep in a corridor bunk bed (DH and I with two toddlers) created tension, despite having agreed with everyone prior to the holiday that we would be need a larger room.

My 'fuck this I'm out' point arrived when I freaked out because one of the kids got up from a chair to use the toilet and forgot to put their shoes on first.
I realised it wasn't a holiday, it was a punishment.

The highlight of the 'holiday' was the TV being an old boxy pile of shite.
The kids had the job of smacking the picture back onto the screen whenever the signal dropped, which was great fun for a while, until my eldest (ever the diplomat) decided to come up with a new allocation scheme for how many wacks each child was allowed.
The argument was still deep in peace talks long after we got home.

So - in summary

*. Avoid cheap AIs (particularly in Egypt)

*. Be very wary of your travelling companions (esp friends-of-friends and in-laws)

*. And never go to Pontins!

Not me, but my friend went to Butlins in Skegness and said it was the worst holiday ever. There were empty nitrous oxide canisters lying around, drunk adults fighting, her friend got really ill after eating something dodgy on the buffet, and she said their accommodation was filthy. She sent me photos of it at the time, and I was shocked! There was a fair bit of hair in the shower when they arrived, and not the kind from your head!

I went to a havens site during covid. I had a severe molar abscess and was on metronidazole. My head felt like it was stuck between a clamp the entire duration and I attested the dental issues and antibiotics as reasons. On the day we travelled back, I lost all sense of taste and smell, then tested positive for covid. I haven't been back to a caravan holidays since.

Excluding the 2 I had a child ( parents hated each other and anything vaguely fun turned out nor to be!)
Wales I think in 2009. Kids were 2 13 and 15. It rained, teens hated it and moaned at everything. It cost a feckin fortune.

The talk of pontins etc reminds me of years ago when we went to the Caister Soul Weekend in Great Yarmouth.
We were woken up about 4am by the caravan shaking. My mate jumped out of bed to see what was going on to he greeted by a middle aged couple having a knee trembler up against the caravan in full view

Stuffedasasausage what’s A/B?

We missed the plane to Trieste on a holiday where we were supposed to pick up a hire car, drive to Ljubljana for a few days, then Porec in Croatia, then back to Trieste. So we had to buy new tickets, the best option was to fly straight to Ljubljana but it was a horrendous palava trying to rearrange the car hire and we had to pay another 200 in fees. When we got there, there was no car seat for our son as they hadn't been expecting us.

We got to our accommodation and the people there warned us that travelling without car seat would attract huge fine if we were caught and advised its to go straight to the shopping centre and buy one. However we got into the ring road and couldn't work out how to exit. We went round this wretched ring road three times before working it out. A police car went past at one point and we made son hide in the foot well in case he was spotted.

Bought car seat, also got some food and drink for our SC accommodation. Got back there, husband cracked open a much needed beer. After three cans he realised he'd bought non alcoholic lager.

It got much better after that although we got to Trieste airport hours early (paranoid about missing another flight) and there was nothing to do there. I got called through for a random bag check just as we'd say down with coffee and food. I took son and was then interrogated about why we had different surnames and whether I had his father's permission to travel. I tried to explain father was in the airport and offered to call him but they were very suspicious and I was so panicked though they let us go through in the end.

Frightenedbunny so funny that you said “ on the trot” when discussing your bowel movements! Sharm el Shite was hilarious🤣🤣🤣

I’m young enough to remember ceefax (and play bamboozle!) but never hooked a holiday on it.

Did you book just based on the few lines of text and the price? That feels so crazy now, given the extensive amount of information online for anything you book.

I stupidly went to stay in the US with an American man I’d had a very brief fling with in London. He said he was building a big funfair/amusement park and wanted my help with the publicity/website etc. When I got there, there was no funfair and I was stuck in an old mobile home in the middle of nowhere on the Mexican border. He was a fantasist and a bit dangerous. I can’t drive so couldn’t go anywhere. Then my face got bitten by a dog. On and on it went.

Nothing as awful as many of these, but have had some incidents...

Flying to Croatia on Jet2. Two attempted landings and each time returned to Venice due to storms. On the third attempt, same, and this time the air crew had run out of hours. Sunday evening in Venice airport, as Jet 2 attempt to organise an international bus transfer. We did manage to get a group together for a €130/head taxi, but which was good as we got to our accommodation by 2230. The people who relied on Jet2 were abandoned at a deserted airport at around 3am (and had to wait for car hire desks to open / transfers to start at 8am.

Arrived in Marrakech having pre-booked a transfer to our riad accommodation. Taken to the less salubrious side of the Medina, we were the abandoned by the transfer driver, because he couldn't find our accommodation in this maze of narrow pedestrian alleys. A stranger found us, and got us to our accommodation. The transfer driver turned up and demanded his tip, and only went away when yelled at by both the kind stranger and the riad staff. The same holiday I caught food poisoning (not from the riad, the food there was lovely), and ended up spending New Year's in bed drinking luke-warm peppermint tea.

Driving holiday around Portugal. Booked an AirBnB on the outskirts of Sintra. Finding it was a challenge as Sintra is a maze of one way roads. We arrive (late) at some locked gates and have to work out how to contact the host. She appears and lets us in to the basement of her architect designed house. She's divorced; the basement used to be her husband's studio, and wasn't really designed as guest accommodation - makeshift kitchen area, office style bathroom, vast open plan space. The biggest problem was that it was freezing cold - an amazing space at warmer times of year, but not great for a New Year's break!

The final one I don't remember a lot of. Family touring caravan holiday where I was probably 6 and DB 4. It rained a lot, and to top it off, both of us came down with chickenpox. My poor parents!

Mine aren’t too bad - both camping holidays local to us. We’d had one site recommended to us & it was ok but definitely in need of some updating. If I remember rightly, it was the 2nd night of 3 when we were hit by a hurricane & DH was desperately trying to stop our tent from taking off! I slept through most of it! The other time was when we’d booked 3 nights on a really nice farm which had loads for children to do. DD must have been about 6. On the first night, she & I came down with a diarrhoea bug ( luckily no sickness). There were only half a dozen toilets for the whole site. We tried to find the funny side & made a joke of using a different loo each time. Had to pack up & go home the next morning. DH was fine.

You poor thing.

Another one that’s not me but a friend was on last day of her holiday on Ithaca when XL went into liquidation and all their planes were grounded with immediate effect.
As back then the wifi was almost non existent on the island she had no idea until the locals told her to look at the news.
No one from XL was answering the phones but thankfully the hotel owner let them stay until they had an update which was a couple of days later.
After a few days not having any idea what was going on, they finally had a call telling them they would be taken back to Kefalonia by ferry the following morning and a repartition flight had been arranged.

She said the plane that had been commissioned to fly them home was Hawaiian Airlines and looked at least 50 years old. If she wasn’t absolutely desperate to finally get home, she would have refused to get onboard.

Can I check - is the Berwick caravan park everyone is talking about Haggerston Castle or one in Berwick itself?

Which hotel? I'm going there soon

Fuck I think you win. That must of all been utterly terrifying

Went to Corfu in the early 90 S. The hotel looked lovely on the outside. Our room had wallpaper peeling off the wall , a lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling, a concrete bed in the minute kitchen, one electric cooking ring , we had to boil the metal teapot in place of the kettle, there was no wardrobe so we had to live out of suitcases. Best of all the owners were hurt when we complained
"You not like our hotel? " We could not afford to move at that time, just had to make the best of it.
We've always called it Castle Dracula since.