Staycation

6th Wedding Anniversary Weekend | Cliff House Holiday Park Suffolk | UK Staycation Review

Saffron BakerLeave a comment

Our 6th Wedding Anniversary, it’s crazy how fast the time has gone we try to mark it each year with a memory or a trip away. This year we decided to explore Suffolk a new place neither of us have been before and we took the boys along with us.

We stayed in a lovely cottage with a hot tub onsite at Cliff House Holiday Park, we chose the site as it has easy excess down to a stunning beach. 

Now arriving at the cottage, we did have some issues, you know I’m always transparent and honest with everything we do, so I don’t want to say it was all perfect. 

The hot tub hadn’t been cleaned… and you may remember from our last wedding anniversary trip click here to read that I caught a severe throat infection from the chemicals they had used. I know I’m crazy for even booking somewhere else with a hot tub so when we arrived of course it was the first thing I checked and it was dirty… I headed over to the front desk to ask if it had been cleaned and they confirmed it had been missed of their list that morning. You guys know me, germs are one of my biggest fears and with everything with Hot tubs in the past I freaked out.

They came and sorted it straight away but the hot tub was never the right temp, was kicking out brown froth and just wasn’t ok so we didn’t really get to use it which was frustrating. But if it had of all been cleaned, I’m sure it would have been lovely. 

The cottage was comfortable again a few issues but nothing that would spoil a holiday, I would recommend if booking bringing your own little hoover and some cleaning products 🙂 that sort of vibe. 

The stairs to the cottage were very steep and curve round, I wouldn’t recommend for small children or anyone who struggles to climb stairs, I felt worried about the children coming down them and there 8 and 10. The cottage itself has 3 bedrooms sleeping 5 people. The toilet and shower are downstairs.

Master bedroom with double bed
Twin Bedroom with 2 single beds
Single bedroom with single bed
( I was tempted to send the husband here so I could star fish the bed! )

The site also had places for people to camp, mobile homes along with some static homes which would be lovely to rent out. 

There were a few shower blocks on site that we could see along with toilets all close to the camp sites. If camping is your thing, I think it would be really lovely.

It’s a dog friendly site, and lots of people had their pets with them. There were also some wild rabbits hopping about which was super cute to see, we even had one run into our back garden. 

They had a fantastic play area for the children, with plenty for them to do. The site had a bar and restaurant with pool tables.

I took a photo of the menu so you can see the sort of prices. I couldn’t see a child’s menu so not sure if that’s something they catered for. 

 On site there is a tiny shop with the bare essentials like milk and bread. The main exciting thing about the site was the access down to the beach, steep steps lead you down to a beautiful coast line. We were there in the last weekend of April and it was HOT we got so lucky with the weather;

It felt like a private beach with it being pretty empty at parts of the day which felt so lovely. I have posted a TikTok and Reel of our time check them out here and here

We noticed near buy there were a couple of lovely looking woodland walks which sadly we didn’t get time to go on, that would have been a plan if the weather had been to chilly for the beach but we were blessed with sunshine both days, to the point where the husband got a cracking tan! 

Few things to note if you’re wanting to have a holiday at Cliff House Holiday Park… we did not see a shop or service station for well over half of the journey (we travelled from Coventry in the West Midlands) so pack everything you need for the weekend plus the kitchen sink… I took breakfast lunch and dinner for every day, drinks and lots of snacks which overall made the whole trip a lot cheaper but obviously meant we needed to pack more. The site itself is disability friendly from what we could see, but the beach defiantly is not, unless locally there is another access point you can drive too which is more disability friendly, but again with how low down the beach is to the cliff, I’m not sure how steep a ramp would be.

The actual beach is a mix of the sand and stones, so the kids found it very painful to walk on it, recommend bringing crocs or sliders. We tried the water shoes but they got full of sand and stones. It as very windy down on the beach and we were pretty cold when sat still, so even though its hot and you burn the sea breeze defiantly got us, so I would recommend packing a scarf or blanket, shawl type thing to drape over you. The waves when we went were lovely and calm, which made us relax a lot more for the children splashing around. It was too cold to fully submerge yourself into the sea. 

If you decide to stay in one of the Cottages, they say they provide you with basics like tea coffee etc but they don’t, we would recommend bringing spare towels which we did, all your tea coffee, salt pepper, toilet paper etc and if you plan on cooking then your oil. They do however have a dishwasher which was super handy. If your needing some help on what to pack See my list here of essential things we always take on holiday with us! The cottage says it comes with a BBQ but it doesn’t, it comes with slabs to put a BBQ on, we luckily brought a portable one from £1 with us.

It was so lovely to get away the four of us and spend some quality time together, I’m excited for our next little mini holiday weekends away in June. You guys seem to love when I share our trips away so of course I will document and tell you all about them on here. 

Have you got any summer trips planned? I would love to know,

Saff xo

Our Holiday Essentials | Things you need!

Saffron Baker3 Comments

Hello my darlings, you know we love our staycation weekends away in the UK, I’ve shared on stories some of the things we take away with us and have always been asked where you to can find them, so I thought I would do a post of all the holiday essentials we take every time we go away! 

We have two children so some of these are great for kids but would also be perfect for your couple or solo traverlers as well.

I hope it gives you some inspiration and if you are going away, have the most amazing time be sure to let me know where you go, we always love to hear people’s recommendations. 

Tripod

Ok here me out, a folding tripod is not just for us content creators, I think everyone should own one. Honestly document those memories, set it up a little way away from yourself and film you on your own, as a couple or family making these memories, capturing the moment. 

Now as we know I am a creative so I have soooo many and have purchased a ridiculous number of tripods. I think I’ve finally come across the holy grail of easy to use, compact to take out but sturdy tripods. Where has it been all my life?

It’s a need! You spend all the money on the holidays and come home with little to no video memories of you ALL in it and remember you can take screen grabs of the videos and have photos! Normally someone else is behind the camera. This Tripod comes with a remote switch so you can set it up and control it from a distance. Of course, this tripod isn’t just for holidays it’s for Christmas too ha! Think setting it up Christmas morning and filming you all around the tree, priceless memories you while cherish for years to come. 

Shop the best of the best here 

Beach overhead towels 

Now if you’re a child or adult, heading to the beach or hot tub, these are honestly amazing. We have used hooded poncho towels for years now, especially for the children. If you have ever been to a beach with a child before you may know how tricky it is sometimes to get them off the beach while carrying everyone’s shoes, clothes, towels, beach bits etc. So, we just throw these towels on over the boys put the hoods up to keep them warm… we don’t have them moaning about being cold, or the towel falling down dragging along the floor, I feel like you know the vibes.

The material of the ones linked isn’t a proper towel material, I would describe the material as a soft microfibre style… but helps you to dry off. It doesn’t absorb all the water making them heavy or hard to dry which is perfect for when your away especially in the UK as we haven’t always got the sun to help dry them off in the evening. They dry super quickly on their own meaning there ready to use again the next day.

(They fit myself at a size 20 they fit my husband who is tall and they fit both the boys who are 8 and 10 they just look like little Jedi’s until they grow a little taller)

Shop the towels we have here

Hot tub test kit 

If you know our past experience, then you will know these are now an absolute must for me! We have had a couple of traumatic encounters with hot tubs. I don’t know why I still book places with them, but now I carry a tub of these test strips with me. So we can test the water every time making sure all the levels are right and no yucky germs. 

Shop the ones we use here

Hanging travel bag

These style travel bags are super handy, they hold everything in from your toothbrushes, tooth paste, have a zip compartment for sanitary products and then ample space to put in shower gels, razor, shampoos etc and the best thing about it, being waterproof with a hook to just hang in the bathroom or behind the bathroom door, makes the whole packing & un packing process easier for us. 

Here’s a great one

Beach Shoes 

All four of us have beach shoes now and I will explain why, firstly I got them for the boys for water parks, like the one in Lego land. There perfect for them to wear around in the day and splash about without worrying about bringing a spare pair of socks and shoes. We have invested in some sturdy ones that the boys wore around Lego land twice two days in a row and didn’t complain once that their feet were sore. Even on water rides they were brilliant no soggy socks. 

We love them for little country walks with streams, beaches with stones like Brighton beach, and a lot of beaches have horrid weever fish, if you don’t know what they are a quick google will explain how vile a sting is from them. So, they help to protect your feet in the sea from sharp things too! 

Shop ours here

Power pack  

An absolute must, especially if you are traveling with children. You never know when your sat nav could fail and you need to use your phone, we always carry a power pack on us. There’s a couple we have for different reasons. 

Power pack 1 – we have a couple of these there perfect to plug into your phone, the Nintendo switches or tablets and have about a full charge on them. These are light and easy to through in backpacks. No charging wire is needed. 

Shop here 

Power pack 2 – Is the big one! Its slim and a little heavy but has a very good battery life, it can charge multiple things at multiple times, it’s got every sort of port you can think of so you can plug your charging wire into it to charge any device. It’s a must for a backup. Especially if you’re staying somewhere far away that you want to be safe for battery life or to a place that is limited on plug sockets like a hotel. 

Shop here 

Plugs & Extensions 

Talking of plug sockets, we always bring one of these where ever we go,

Plug number 1 – Its perfect to take with us to be able to charge things using a usb wire but also has the option for a plug as well, its small and light. 

Shop here & here

Plug number 2 – this is perfect for the hotel stays, or even if you’re camping and have access to electricity or in a mobile home. It’s an extension with multiple places to charge you usb cables and plugs with a good length to be able to stretch it to where it needs to. 

Shop here

Head phones and dividers 

Children and their technology on car journeys just arnt the one! We always make sure they have the airphones as well as a ear phone splitter so they can both listen to there own thing or share a screen. These have come super in handy when we have shared hotels together and can’t have own space. In the mornings it means they can entertain themselves while we get a little more zZzzZZz

Shop headphones here

Shop divider here

Box with all meds first aid 

I do this every trip, the husband thinks it’s to much but I think it’s a necessity and the fact I pack It means we don’t need it, if I didn’t pack it best believe we would need it. It helps me know we have every base covered. Some may say its un necessary I would say organised ha!

I have linked any bits you can get online, click on the name to shop. 

Then of course your, Calpol, pain killers, cold and flu tablets, ibuprofen, anti-sickness bands, Piriton etc 

Speaker

Our Bluetooth speaker comes absolutely everywhere with us, it has amazing battery life great sound quality and is super durable. Always handy to have to either take to beach, use by the hot tub etc 

Shop speaker here

Kindle

Very recently we brought the boys their 1st Kindles and it’s been so amazing to see them read more. They read with the kindle so so much more than they did with their books. We got them the style where it’s JUST books nothing else so no distraction. What I love about the kindle is there perfect to take away as the battery life is LONG you can adjust the light settings so they can be read in the dark or on the beach when the sun is glaring down. Perfect way to relax and unwind and for the children to also disconnect from the real world. 

Our boys have these kindles here 

Amazon duffle bag 

Never thought I would be raving about a bag! These are blumming amazing and we have two of them, they fit absolutely everything in, we could fit all 4 of our clothes and some for a weekend away. Highly recommend for holidays in the UK where your packing bits in your car. 

These are our ones here

Clip on sun tan 

Sun tan lotion is a must we all know this, but I absolutely love the clip-on versions we make ourselves at home. It makes things a lot easier when you’re out for the day, to clip it onto your bag for easy reaching. Leave the chunky bottles at home. You can buy clip on bottles that are ready to be filled with your suntan lotion, if you need labels making give me a shout and we can do some for you. They’re also great for kids school bag.

Shop clip on bottles here

Small salt pepper, ketchup and mayo 

If your condiment monsters like us then this one is for you. A lot of holidays we go on we either cook for ourselves or we will maybe order in a chippy for example, 9/10 the place we are staying doesn’t have sauces and, I mean there a must! So we have mini virions we take with us! 

Shop the handy travel condiments here

I would love to know what your holiday essentials are?

Saff xo

Old Lanwarnick Cottages Review – What to do in and around the area PT 3| AD – GIFTED

Saffron BakerLeave a comment

* Old content, original post was uploaded to saffronbaker.com July 2019 to know why click here *

Hello you, have you caught up with Part 1 & 2 here? Please do, this all may not make much sense otherwise.

We were kindly gifted a stay at Old Lanwarnick Cottages in June and wanted to share with you all what we got up to. I know from past holidays it can be a bit daunting booking somewhere out in the countryside. We have been to a good few Haven sites in the past and everything is on-site but if you want to venture out there’s nothing to do locally and at the time we struggled to find a real honest guide with a break down on where to go. It’s a different sort of holiday if you get what I’m saying.

Old Lanwarnick is the perfect location to stay at in Cornwall if you’re looking for a relaxed peaceful holiday with plenty to do locally.

At Old Lanwarnick you feel like your right out deep in the countryside, surrounded by nature and rolling hills. But you’re only a 10-minute drive from a beautiful little old fishing town called Loee.

Loee was one of our favourite places to visit especially being off session. Parking is reasonable but can be a challenge so I recommend you head off early, there is a larger carpark down the road you can use too.

Loee has lots of cute little shops you can buy all the essentials for the beach along with holiday treats and knickknacks. It also has some quirky unique shops that we enjoyed walking around along and also an indoor market.

There are so many good places to eat in in loee, we had classic fish and chips at “Kelly’s of Loee” it was delicious and the boys enjoyed giant ice creams.

Every shop we went in around loee we were warned about the seagulls robbing your food, and my gosh! They can be savage! * Story coming later *

Our favourite place to get Ice cream was “Treleaven Luxury Cornish Ice Cream” the lady who works there was so lovely and friendly. According to the boys, the ice cream was the best part of the holiday.

Loee beach is a little walk from the car park, I would say about 10 mins with two slow little ones, two bodyboards, all the buckets and spades towels etc. Once you get to the beach there are food and drink places right up close which is handy as well as public toilets. Getting onto the beach was perfect they had a small slop down. We found a lovely section and set up camp for the day. It was clean and tidy no rubbish in sight. The boys loved running in and out of the waves and playing in the sand we spent the whole day there.

Storytime

*The Seagulls at loee beach are on another level! They are pretty brave. I was taking a photo of these brownies for a campaign, I checked all around me to make sure no bird was watching and I took the photo, 5 seconds max the brownie was out of the foil. I lifted it off my kindle when at least 5 seagulls bombarded me for it and snatched it right out my hand, this, of course, made crumbs and suddenly I was a human dartboard. Some lovely women watched this unfold and ran over to help get them away. Luckily the boys were in the water with Luke. After that, they just hovered and bullied me by robbing the boy’s buckets and spades flying off with them… have a look at my Instagram highlights at our holiday stories and you will see on there! *

Walking back through loee to our car we came across a small arcade which is lovely, there was a larger one across the road from the car park next to a large outdoor play area. I love that they only had the two, I’m all for arcades and things but they come across super touristy to me, which is brill if that’s the sort of holiday you are wanting. It was nice they weren’t all in your face.

One thing in Loee we didn’t do this time around but would do when the children are older is crabbing, shops were selling all the buckets and bates and things you needed to go crabbing. The only reason we didn’t do it is that you had to sit along the edge where the boats are and it’s a good drop of the side into the water below, I don’t trust the boys enough yet, epically Liam. He is clumsy like his mama.

Just down the road from Loee town, a 2-minute drive you come across a rocky beach. The boys absolutely loved it here! Its free parking and it’s super easy, you pull up on the side and walk down the slope to the beach. It is all stones and rocks. The best thing we had brought the boys before we came was waterproof shoes, these were a godsend. They had super strong grips on the bottom which helped them when climbing the rocks and being waterproof meant they dried quickly and didn’t irritate their feet. They wore them paddling in the stream at Old Lanwarnick. We brought these from Sports direct two pairs for £9 bargain and there still using them now we are back at home in the garden.

On the Rocky beach, there were so many creatures you could find, on the walk down there was a sign up showing you what you could see if you looked hard enough.

We found some baby crabs, shrimps and other interesting creatures. The boys loved exploring and trying to find them.

The view was incredible, there was an island straight across and it looked beautiful, there were boats you could go on touring around, so picturesque. It felt like we were in a different country. We were lucky to have the weather on our side! It was so lush. Getting major holiday blues talking about it now!

There were a few big walks you to do right by the rocky beach at the top of the road, this is something we would defiantly do when the boys are older.

On one of the days we visiting a gorgeous place Polperro, Polperro is a fishing harbour just 15 minutes drive from Old Lanwarnick.

The carpark was a little experience and you could either walk down to Polperro which we have heard is so lovely and there are beautiful houses and shops you can see that all get missed if you go by tram, but we opted for the tram with the boys and not knowing what it was like once we got down there. It was a couple of pounds per person return and they are so frequent we didn’t have to wait long at all.

In Polperro there are lots of cute shops and places to eat, it was super busy with people enjoying the sun. Polperro has some of the most beautiful views, I could have stood there all day taking it in. Sadly the sea was in so we couldn’t go down on the beach but it was beautiful and the sea breeze was just what we needed.

The boys got ice cream from the first shop as the tram comes down and they loved it, there was seating for us to use as well. Luke got a burger from the same place and said it was good.

We stayed for a few hours, nowhere near as long as we thought we would but if the sea was out I’m sure we would have stayed a lot longer.

It was well worth the visit and if we had more time we would have gone back and checked for when the tide was out.

About 20mins drive from Old Lanwarnick there was an ASDA, farm foods, BnM and KFC. We took a couple of trips here to stock up on food and frozen food for the cottage-like ice creams and meals for the boys. There are local shops that sell the essentials but if you’re looking for more variety then these were perfect. The drive was lush too, we love driving around on holiday taking everything in and it’s a good way to spot places you may like to visit.

Locally to Old Lanwarnick, there were a few farm places we could go to, and loads of country walks we could do too. The owners of Old Lanwarnick have farm and stables, we got to go down and have a stable experience that the boys loved and enjoyed so much! Full post coming on that soon too.

If we had gone on this holiday pre-children, there would have been so many lovely pubs and restaurants we could eat at! Our two don’t like to sit still so we didn’t get to try any out this time around.

We had the best holiday, it was jam-packed. Every day was busy we could have done with an extra couple of days to chill out and have a cottage day. What we loved that we could have been as busy or as chilled as we wanted the options were there and we went with the flow. We took things with us like bubbles and buckets and spades but we really didn’t need to there was plenty of choices locally. 

A huge thank you to Old Lanwarnick for having us and giving us the opportunity to make these incredible memories.

I hope this has helped you if you are thinking about visiting Cornwall or looking for somewhere to stay.

Saff xo

Perfect family holiday Build Up PT 1 | Old Lanwarnick Cottages Cornwall | AD – GIFTED

Saffron Baker2 Comments

* Old content, original post was uploaded to saffronbaker.com July 2019 to know why click here *

We were very kindly invited to stay at Old Lanwarnick In June 2019, if you follow me on Instagram then you would have seen some of the things we got up to when we were there.

This holiday experience will be broken into parts, as there is so much, I want to tell you guys, in one go would just be a jumbled mess.

Part 1 – Perfect family holiday build-up (What your reading now)

Part 2 – Old Lanwarnick Cottages where we stayed

Part 3 – Holiday Diary – Things to do locally around Old Lanwarnick Cottages

Be sure to check out the other posts!

Cornwall is one of our favourite places in the UK, we have done a few holidays as a family when the children were little but this was a massive thing for us, this was our first family holiday with the kids being older, more independent and we didn’t have prams, sterilisers, bottles, baby food all that stuff that comes with little ones!

*FYI prams and beaches don’t mix, packing is a nightmare when you have little room in your boot with the prams taking up all the space, having to look around at pram friendly places and battling prams against people in general*

So yeah both boys fully walking, talking and had an opinion on what they enjoyed and wanted to do! Felt like we had hit a Milestone!

The whole build-up to the holiday was so exciting, the last holiday we did was to Butlins for our “Honey Moon” 2 years ago, both boys in prams, we still needed travel cots and stair gates on rooms it was a challenging holiday, I felt like the boys didn’t get out of it as much as we had hoped and of course these things cost a lot of money, so when you come away feeling a little deflated it can be hard to get excited about booking your next trip. So, the following year we decided to miss out on a holiday and use the money to do up the garden for the boys instead. I have shown parts of our garden on Instagram but its kiddie heaven with slides, swings, monkey bars, trampoline the lot.

2019 we have focused on the house, again if you follow me on socials you know we started house renovating back in Feb 2019, we moved out and into my dad’s at the end of March when I became very ill and here we are now, writing this in July and we still haven’t finished, still haven’t moved back still working hard and ploughing away, so to say this holiday was needed is an understatement!

The boys have deserved this more than anyone, they have been so amazing through all of the renovations it’s a lot for them and we didn’t expect it to take as long as it has done with this many disruptions. We didn’t think we would be able to have a proper family holiday this year, with the time and money.

Telling them was one of the most exciting moments for us, they both fully understand now and seeing their little excited faces was just amazing. We jumped straight online to show them.

Old Lanwarnick have the best website, they show you photos of the accommodation and area along with an interactive tour. This was just what our boys needed. Ethan’s Autistic so being able to see where we are staying and familiarize himself with it was perfect. When he arrived, he knew what his room looked like, what the sofa, kitchen, tables the lot looked like and it made the build-up more exciting. Both boys would say they can’t wait to eat their dinner at the green table. Ethan couldn’t wait to get in the hot tub, Liam was excited about the big bath. They were excited to sleep in their rooms at the Holiday house. We must have looked online at least 20 times at the Cottage, taking it all in and talking about the holiday and what was to come.

They were now counting down the days until Monday the 24th of June!

Keep an eye out for part 2 coming very soon!

Saff xo