Family adventure holiday: Can a sceptical father enjoy a week in Devon?

​Tim Lott appreciates the finer things in life, so how would he get on at a back-to-basics holiday camp with his wife and children in the South-west?

Manor of speaking: Barton Hall

When I was a child, an almost unthinkable amount of time ago, I used to be taken – not exactly under protest, but without much enthusiasm – to stay in holiday camps in the West Country. These were usually disguised as “Country Clubs” or “Chalet Hotels” but the basic principle was the same – spartan accommodation, terrible food, group activities and bingo or the hokey cokey in the evenings.

I can't quite remember if I stayed at Pontins Barton Hall just outside Torquay, but I certainly would have experienced something similar when, aged 10, I went to the Torbay Chalet Hotel in Paignton which offered a Hammond Organ, nightly cabaret and “hot and cold showers”. I have avoided such establishments assiduously ever since.

Nowadays, Pontins Barton Hall has been converted into one of the centres for PGL, a sort of down-market Center Parcs, specialising in “activity” and “adventure holidays”. It's located on a property which is partly distressed baronial (Barton Hall was built in the 1830s by the Lord of the Manor) and part municipal, at least in appearance. The ranks of chalets could easily pass for a low-rise housing estate in south-east London or a Neapolitan slum (there is laundry hanging from many of the communal concrete balconies) if they weren't fringed by the incongruous Devon countryside. PGL is where I used to send my two elder children for supervised holidays when they were pre-teen (it was informally known as “Parents Get Lost”). They always enjoyed themselves, and I was glad to leave them to it.

However, having learned that PGL now also offers “family adventures” in which you join your children for a four- or seven-night break, I decided to put my historic aversion to one side and spend Monday to Friday mountain biking, zip-wiring, raft building, abseiling and much besides. My two younger children, Esme and Lydia, aged eight and 13 respectively, joined me along with my wife Rachael to see what one version of the modern equivalent of a holiday camp looked like. I was not savouring the prospect – in recent years, I have largely confined myself to slightly more upmarket establishments.

My initial impressions of Barton Hall did little to dilute my prejudice. Our room was beyond basic, with two simple beds and a shower/bath (Lydia and Esme were next door). No mini bar, of course – only a kettle with a few teabags and sachets of instant coffee.

Everyone on the premises was part of a family (with the exception of a 50-strong group of vociferous German teenagers) so there was a far higher percentage of children than I am used to, making a great deal more noise than I welcome. The air was punctuated by the sound of footballs being kicked. There were quite a lot of people whose BMIs left more than a little to be desired – and more than a few of them, to my consternation, were among the blue-shirted PGL activities staff (the contemporary equivalent, I suppose, of the Bluecoats who used to look after my 10-year-old self).

We arrived on a Monday night, so the first stop was the evening meal at the dining room, or “canteen” as it might more accurately be termed. A quick check of the week's menu suggested that I was unlikely to be eating much in the way of quinoa, kale salad or guinea fowl. Chips featured very prominently along with chicken nuggets, sausages, gammon steak, turkey burgers and “white fish” with parsley sauce, a delicacy I thought had long been consigned to the annals of culinary history. We sat around the table looking glum (Lydia and Esme are not great ones for sporting activities either). “I'm having a lot of trouble remaining optimistic for everyone,” Rachael said, her bright smile shadowed with anxiety.

However, our apprehension was entirely misplaced. We had a rich and rewarding week, and I learned to put my bourgeois London prejudices in the landfill where they very much belonged. Yes, there was bingo in the evening, and there were those little coloured lights that danced around the bars, and I couldn't get a flat white with a cantucci, but we got something much more precious – a sense of bonding and family purpose that we had never experienced before on a holiday.

The first thing that is worth pointing out about PGL is that you are put in groups of about a dozen (we were with a couple of charming families from Birmingham and Essex). So, during the four daily 90-minute sessions your actual time of physically participating in an activity can be quite brief. For instance, on our first outing, the trapeze – which involved climbing a 30ft pole and jumping out into thin air and on to, yes, a trapeze – each of us spent only a few minutes actually climbing and jumping. For the rest of the time we were watching other people. This was true of most activities, such as the zip-wire or abseiling.

However, it is not mere spectating. It is more theatre. Trying to urge the frightened child up the pole and seeing them conquer their fears (or not) is a large part of the experience – rather like therapy-as-entertainment. When they actually do overcome their terrors (and jumping from heights is quite a big ask for a seven-year-old – the youngest in our group) there is a big rush from the rest of the spectators, even if it may have taken 10 or 15 minutes of pleading and imprecation to convince them.

Barton Hall

This was true of Esme on the zip wire, who stood there on the edge of a platform into yawning space for at least 10 minutes before we gave the instructor permission simply to shove her off. After the initial shock had worn off, and the sense, presumably, of bitter betrayal, she came back swiftly for a second launch.

To say such holidays are “character building” may or may not be true, but they are certainly “family building”. You eat together, play together, strive together, get wet and fearful together. On our mountain biking session, Lydia was so soaked and muddy she was barely recognisable as human, resembling more some stunted Morlock. Likewise, looking at her face when she prepared to abseil backwards off a wall the size of a house, to see the terror in her eyes was discomfiting – but the joy of her achievement in launching herself more than compensated.

Lydia after a muddy bike ride (Tim Lott)

As for me – a 59-year-old man very much not in a state of peak fitness – the experience was something of a bonfire of the vanities. I struggled to get the safety harnesses on and off, let alone excel at many of the activities. I discovered that both Rachael and Lydia were stronger and faster than me in many respects, notably climbing. I was not, it turned out, the alpha male I had thought myself to be. I was, in fact, a bit of a klutz.

On the whole, I was able to take this in relatively good spirits, although during our dry ski run, where Lydia and Rachael both tried to usher me away from the “skiers” group to the “absolute beginners” (I considered myself qualified as I'd had three days of ski tutorials a few years earlier in the Swiss Alps), I had a mini tantrum, removed my skis and went back to the bar for a cream tea. I regretted it, of course (although it was a very good cream tea).

Much more fun on the ski slope was an activity called Ringo, where you are sent down the slope at great speed in what are effectively inflatable tyres; this had the added enjoyment of appearing genuinely hazardous. PGL staff were so preoccupied with health and safety that the activities could be a bit of a bore, but Ringo was run by a local business and seemed more relaxed in its approach, making it by far the most exciting event of the week.

Some activities were definitely more interesting than others – I could have lived without raft-building, although the launch and subsequent sinking of our hopeless attempts was enjoyable, even though I got dunked – and climbing a wall struck me as marginally less fun than falling off one (as in abseiling). But for the most part the four days we spent at PGL were among the most enjoyable I have ever had with my family.

It's also extremely good value, and the food was actually OK most of the time. The staff are helpful and friendly, and although it rained heavily on two of the four days, Esme cried at the end because she didn't want to go home.

My tragedy was different – discovering that I was weaker and more incompetent than I had previously imagined. But I had fun finding out something that, on my accustomed inactivity holidays, I would never have known. Perhaps that's a mixed blessing, but it did, nevertheless, feel like more of a blessing than not.

Staying there

PGL (0333 321 2114; pgl.co.uk/families) offers breaks of three, four or seven nights at Barton Hall. A three-night stay in summer costs from £235 per adult and from £185 per child (5-18), including accommodation in an en-suite family room, meals, activities, evening entertainment, equipment and all instruction.

More information

visitdevon.co.uk