Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park Review

By our count, Haven Cleethorpes is Haven's biggest resort (but some disagree)

Call me names if you want, but I was terribly excited about my first visit to Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park.

Of course, I get quite excited about visiting any holiday park but this one is something of an exception.

By our reckoning, Cleethorpes Beach holiday park is Haven's largest in the country. You will find plenty of guides online saying that Haven Devon Cliffs is bigger but we painstakingly counted up the number of caravans on the official maps and concluded that Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park is the biggest. It's got more 1800 caravans lodges, plus 120 camping and touring pitches.

But does bigger necessarily mean better? 

​Here are our thoughts on accommodation, facilities and the general vibe and atmosphere at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park in Lincolnshire.

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First impressions and location of Haven Cleethorpes Beach Caravan Holiday Park 

When you arrive at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Caravan Holiday Park, your first impression will be the long driveway that leads down to the main entrance. This begins to give you a general idea of the scale of the park. It's a similar experience if you're visiting Butlins, for example, where you will be driving around roads quite some time until you get to check in. 

The approach to Haven Cleethorpes Beach is longer than most holiday parks

The location is, of course, on the East Lincolnshire coast. Like several Haven holiday parks it has the significant advantage of having a beach on the doorstep.

​It does take a few minutes to get to the beach and some of the best located accommodation doesn't actually allow direct access. 

Instead, we ended up walking through another small holiday park (which appeared to be residents only) to get down to the beach. 

A bench with a view at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

Cleethorpes itself is a classic British bucket and spade location. It's just along the coast from Skegness and Mablethorpe and has a similar type of beach. The sand goes on for miles and at low tide you would be hard pressed to get to the actual sea. However, towards the holiday park there is a much nicer section of soft sand, where we found a good place to sit and enjoy the beach. 

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Facilities at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Caravan Holiday Park

As with a lot of Haven holiday parks, Cleethorpes Beach has a really excellent 'Adventure Village'. Rather than scattering facilities throughout the site you will find most things in a central location. This works really well as it means you can potter between the different activities and let the older children go and try things for themselves. 

The Adventure Village is the place to be

We had a wander around and took a look at some of the more adventurous activities, which include high ropes and low ropes, depending on how old you are. Needless to say, you pay extra for activities but the prices at Haven tend to be much cheaper than those at Center Parcs (see our guide to Haven activity prices).

Low ropes at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

The high ropes for somewhat more adventurous children and enthusiastic dads

The Adventure Village has something called The Jump, which you will find at several Haven holiday parks. These involve jumping onto a large pillow. I can't say this particularly appeals to me, but I suppose everyone is different. 

Fancy jumping off a platform onto a giant pillow?

The resort also has a climbing wall, which is a bit more appealing to me. 

The climbing wall at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

We also found some bungee trampolines at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

The playground on the site is a decent one and you can see money has been invested to make this Adventure Village a real focal point. 

We've seen similar playground at several Haven holiday parks around England

It was a bit cold for the outdoor splash park when we visited!

The Adventure Village features one of Haven's Bark Yards, which are dog agility courses. It is quite straightforward but they are good fun and they're a good signal of how dog friendly Haven is (apart from two parks, which don't allow dogs - Burnham on Sea and Riviere Sands.

A Bark Yard dog agility course can be found at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

Also in the Adventure Village we found kart and bike hire, and a little way outside with the village we found a Creative Studio where you can do things like pottery painting. 

You may wonder if you need to hire a bike when you visit Haven Cleethorpes Beach. In my opinion, it's not essential but it does give you an indication of quite how large this site is. We had bikes and spent a long time exploring, getting lost and trying to get our bearings.

Honestly, I do not think I actually did get a very clear picture of where everything was on the site when we visited. It is so large and sprawling with various dead ends that you end up using the signs all the time to get back to the main reception and facilities. 

Other activities we spotted included minigolf...

...full size golf for grown ups...

...and an activity range at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

For eating out, the Adventure Village has a Slim Chickens and a Wetherspoons.

Haven has been adding Wetherspoons pubs to several of its holiday parks recently. The prices aren't quite as cheap as your average high street Wetherspoons, but they are still good value and we think it's a really good match-up and a way to make a holiday more affordable. I personally quite like knowing what I'm going to get, so there is a nice familiarity about having Wetherspoons on site. 

Food and drink options include Slim Chickens...

...and The Humber Stone, which is a Wetherspoons pub

The swimming pool can also be found in this part of the holiday park. The pool at Haven Cleethorpes Beach is a really good one, with an indoor and outdoor section and a lazy river. There are also a couple of decent flumes, which are good fun. 

The pool at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park has connected indoor and outdoor sections

The choice of flumes is pretty good as well

As an aside, it's worth mentioning that this holiday park used to be named Haven Thorpe Park. It changed a few years ago, partly because of the confusing name it shared with the theme park in the south of England.

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Accommodation at Haven Thorpe Park

As mentioned earlier, there are well over a thousand caravans at Haven Cleethorpes Beach holiday park. They have a range of grades at Haven, which you can find more about in our thrilling blog guide to Haven grades. We didn't see a significant number of large lodges, which you do get at some Haven holiday parks. 

These are some of the lake view caravans at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

These are the more typical caravans at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

We prefer the caravans with a terrace/veranda

These seafront caravans have a sea view at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

A typical view from a seafront caravan at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

There is also a large camping and touring area at Haven Cleethorpes Beach, which you don't get at every Haven resort. This can be a much cheaper way to have a Haven holiday if you have your own caravan or don't mind spending a week in a tent. It was relatively busy when we visited. 

There are about 120 pitches for tourers and campers at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

Caravans are well spread out and surrounded by trees

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Vibe and atmosphere 

It's fair to say this is a big and busy holiday park. I suspect that lots of people would find it a bit overwhelming, particularly if their accommodation is a long way from the Central Village. If that's the case, you may prefer a much smaller holiday park, such as Cleethorpes Pearl, which is next door and run by Away Resorts. 

A good number of trees and plants can be found around the site, which avoids it becoming two sparse. It's not up there with the likes of Haven Wild Duck or Center Parcs for trees, but there are enough.

Haven has spent a lot of money on upgrading this holiday park particularly around the Adventure Village, which gives it a nice modern feel.

The majority of the signposts they are the older Haven style. This is unlikely to be noticed by anyone apart from me, but I like to pay attention to how modern these sign posts are, as it shows whether the site has been invested in recently. I personally, think if these were updated it would give the site a slightly smarter look. 

The signage at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park is the older style

An essential photo opportunity at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park

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Final thoughts on Haven Cleethorpes Beach ​

If anything Haven Cleethorpes Beach was even bigger and more sprawling than we expected. We knew it was big but we didn't realize quite how confusing it was going to be to find our way around. That's not really a big problem and I personally am a big fan of large holiday parks where you can spend several days exploring and getting to know the site.

Other people don't really feel settled until they have properly got their bearings. If that's you then you may prefer to stay somewhere else - or to book a caravan that is quite near to the central Adventure Village. 

In terms of facilities though, we were really impressed with Haven Cleethorpes Beach. You won't find many Haven holiday parks with many more facilities than this one.

The beach is quite convenient but it isn't my personal favourite beach of all the Haven holiday parks (find my favourite Haven beaches here).

I found the beach to be a little wide and windswept, so it's more suited to walking the dog than a long day out at the seaside. Beaches are a personal thing though, so some people may find it to be absolutely perfect for their needs.

The beach at Haven Cleethorpes Beach Holiday Park is wide and sometimes windy

If I'm honest, Cleethorpes on the East Lincolnshire coast is not my favourite part of England. I personally prefer the South West of England, the Isle of Wight and the Lake District. However, that is another personal thing and for many people East Lincolnshire is exactly what they're looking for. It has an old fashioned charm to it, which I do appreciate.

The entrance to the pier in Cleethorpes

These fairground rides looked like they hadn't operated in a while

There are plenty of amusement arcades on the seafront at Cleethorpes

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