Sandhaven Caravan Park

Another cheeky weekend getaway, so close to home it has to be. This weekend I though we’d try Sandhaven Caravan Park in South Shields. Close to home and should provide a nice stay near the park and sea front. So I booked the site and paid up in full, no refunds given! The site must be fairly popular as I had tried to book this site last year to no avail. Better luck this time though!

Upon arrival we reported into reception. With a warm greeting we were shown our pitch and then given the tour as to where the usual facilities are. This comprises of a toilet block with number entry, elsan point at the rear of this block. Water and grey water were provided by points in between the pitches.

The pitches are concrete hard standing for the caravan, with a gravel base next to it for awning and a flagged section in front of both to park the car. Without further a-do I reversed the caravan onto the pitch, we levelled in no time thanks to the concrete base being level. 😉 Our usual routines kicked in and once again we were ‘home’.

I was feeling a little run down this week, so I was glad to just relax on my seat and snooze a little. We went for a little walk around the site, which is mainly statics with just the entrance area reserved for tourers. There seemed to be a couple of seasonal pitched caravans as well. Upon return we made tea and once again relaxed into the evening.

Following washing up I decided to fill the aqua roll back up so that we didn’t run out in the morning, as I knew we’d be on a fairly rushed routine, especially with the clocks going forward losing an hour! As I went outside I notices a rather large amount of water by the nearside wheel. Strange? And some more water near the front. Upon closed inspection little bubbles could be seen in this water, namely washing up water. It had seemed we had sprung a leak. We instantly started hunting down the leak, discovering the water had run from the sink all the way along the nearside of the caravan, escaping at two air vents to drain outside. We duly began mopping up and then turned our attention to the source. It was the sink, it looked like the waste pipe had come away from the plug. But how to get to it? The fridge was in the way, the cutlery drawers were in the way. Something best left to Catterick Service Department? As night was drawing in, we left it and retired for the evening.

Next morning, we headed for church, played the service, ran the choir practise and then we headed home again! My attentions were now focused on the sink rather than railways for a change. After a little reviewing various options on the internet I decided to take another look at the sink. There I discovered the screws holding the sink in place. I took these out and was glad to discover that the sink simply popped out! From here we could re-attach the waste pipe and resume normality. We tested it and all seemed well. It coped with a sink full of water when we washed tea up, so happy again!

An eventful weekend, shame we didn’t get chance to see the area around the campsite, but we’ll be back and hopefully we’ll get chance then.