St Ives Bay Holiday Park

My family and I have been visiting St Ives Bay Holiday Park for Five years now. We love everything about the place(even the mattresses). We have three children aged between 9 and 15 who cant wait to go every year.
The beach is beautiful, the pool clean, warm and lots of fun. We spend our nights in the Dynamite club enjoying a variety of entertainment suitable for adults and children. Theres bingo every night with good prize amounts(we've even won a couple of times).
We have become good friends with many of the staff and people from all over the country who also are regular visitors to the park. We love the place so much, we have booked for two weeks next year, even though I am still ironing the clothes from this holiday. Why go abroad when all this is on our doorsteps(Eight hours in the car but worth it!)

3 readers found this review helpful

Two adults and children 5 & 2 in a tent. St Ives bay is lovely, beach fantastic - even better if weather was guaranteed!
Toilet blocks clean and well maintained - very hot water in showers, too hot for my 2 yr old though (plug sockets in toilets and always plenty of soap and loo roll). Regular security patrols.
Large pitches, plenty of room for a 9 man tent and car, shop provide ice packs at £1 deposit each and will give you freshly frozen ones each time you need them at 50p a go - they won't freeze your own though - on to a winner there!
Shop well stocked with food, drink, camping gear and beach stuff, bit pricey though, Lidl just around corner from site entrance- much more reasonable. Didn't use launderette.
Swimming pool large and clean but minute changing room and only 2 extremely cold showers at side of pool, take a towel and a coat or jumper and run for the shower blocks, it's quite windy there most of the time as the site is built on sand dunes so it can get a little cold and draughty, especially when your just out of a nice warm pool!
Conservatory and bar next door to pool do great food reasonably priced and most of it's available for take away or if you prefer there are lots of curry houses and Chinese takeaways in Hayle.
There is also a pizza van in the car park on weds evening 6-9, we went at 8pm and they'd sold out so get there early.
Bingo and entertainer on most nights in main bar with separate area with children’s entertainer and disco - our kids loved the magician - zim zam harry kazam! - haven't stopped talking about him since we got back!
Beaches in this whole area are great, go to porthcurno near lands end or carbis bay ( £5 to park the car for the day here though). Don’t take the car into st ives, drive down the road to lelant and take the train, £4 return and you can come and go all day if you want.
All in all lovely area and site - we all enjoyed it, only down side was lack of indoor children’s play area for those not so nice days.
We would definitely go again - even with the seven hour drive to get there!!!

1 reader found this review helpful

Got back today. 7 of us in an 8 berth caravan. Week self catering.
Caravan a little cramped but liveable. Must supply hoovers. Sand everywhere!
Rabbits everywhere but edible. The bars are either not open in the afternoon or close at 2 which I thought daft as we had a few rainy days. Put in Sky. Weather unreliable. £1 a day not a deal breaker.
Shop fine. Didn’t use laundry. Pool fine. Hayle drab. St Ives all pasties and fish and chips. Went there once. Nuff said. Flambards in Helston has good points but dear and closes half 4. Don’t care what their ads say. We were there and it’s a rip off.
St Ives bay worth a re- visit though. Beach is quite magnificent. We were there on hot days and loads of room. Sunsets lovely.
Totally unsuitable for disabled people and difficult if you have very small children with buggies or prams. Up and down to the beach is knackering. Enjoy.

Everything is great and the beach is divine as mentioned above in the other letters, but I am amazed no one has mentioned the hard thick-plastic covered beds. They are so uncomfortable. They supplied nice clean linen for the A6 chalet, which was great, but it just slid off of the plastic covering on the mattress and was hot and very sticky in the night. The rooms had a bad damp smell, so we had to run in and open up the whole chalet to let the air pass through.
I would not say it is the cleanest of places. I am not really a clean freak but the windows inside were full of sticky children's fingers all over it at about 2 ft from the floor. That should have been cleaned off. The toilet brush was so foul and soupy yucky inside the holder, that I threw it away and went and bought them a new one. That helped to stop the smell somewhat in the toilet, but I think it was from whatever lived under the lino! They do not supply a Hoover so the sand and other bits get all over the dark carpet and in the beds.
Two men with big canisters sprayed insecticide outside the chalet without letting us know and we were in the chalet with the windows open at the time and it was hard to breathe for a few minutes, but at least they spray for bugs. The launderette is great with what looks like new machines, but is expensive: £8.00 for 2 loads (£3 washing machine and 20p for 4 minutes drying time.) The machines do not wring the clothes out very well, so it takes at least £1 to dry a load but things are still quite damp afterwards.
The park staff are helpful and plentiful and will go to extremes to make sure your stay is a pleasant one. The park is kept safe with many uniformed security staff patrolling all the time, but it could do with a better clean after guests leave and a Hoover would keep you from sleeping in sandy beds. The hard plastic covering is a bit much though. Like sleeping in Tupperware.

We went on a weeks holiday to St Ives Bay in August 2004. I have never had such a good time in my life!
Where we stopped was amazing, in a caravan park, there was entertainment on every night and I loved it as did my little brother and the rest of the family :D
The beaches were gorgeous! It was almost like being abroad, the weather was superb.
We also visited lands end, which was amazing, somewhere I’d always wanted to go - a great day out, well worth it! :)
I really enjoyed my visit to St Ives , and I really want to go back again.

2 readers found this review helpful

Excellent place to stay, we camped for the week, and though we were lucky with the weather I'm sure it would have been a great holiday if it had poured the whole time. The facilities are excellent, even campers can use the pool and all the outdoor areas (such as the crazy putting and tennis), though I think there's a charge for tennis.
They charge your mobile phone in the office for £1 which saves the hassle of trying to find a way of getting it charged when camping for a week (really handy service). It's a 20 minute walk from Hayle and there are regular busses to all the main Cornish attractions. Plus there's a train station in Hayle also.
We spent a couple of days in St Ives (by 20min bus ride) which were great fun, but the best place we went was paradise park in Hayle itself, it wasn't what I'd normally pick for a day out but it was close so we gave it a go. It's a wildlife park themed mostly on birds, there's a parrot show, a falconry show and you can see them feed the otters. It doesn't sound like much but it's just a nice way to spend a day out, plus they even let adults have a go in the petting zoo, feeding goats etc. which lets you feel like a kid again:)
Also look into a trip to the Minack theatre (they have a web site) it's on lands end and it's an open air theatre, it's beautiful, took my girlfriend there for her birthday (which happened to occur while we were staying at St Ives Bay), it's just such an interesting experience, just look for the web site and you'll see what you're getting. A local taxi and mini bus firm runs a bus which goes past St Ives Bay (so yet again no need to drive). Tickets and transport totalled £20 each.
Information on transport is on the Minack theatre web site. Anyway, just wanted to say how great a place St Ives Bay is and how convenient everything is. Also worth noting is the food outlet, it's not gourmet fayre or anything but it's great food for all that, plus you get to eat looking out over a cliff to scenic view of St Ives bay and depending on the time you can stick around and watch the sunset from the bar next door.
There's also a cinema to keep kids occupied for the evening (we've not got any but it looked handy and worth mentioning). Anyway, save some hassle ditch the car, relax, save some money and go for a week in St Ives bay, it'll relax you perfectly, just what a holiday should be!