Aberafon, Gyrn Goch, Wales

by **Ady** 21st November 2013, 01:58

Aberafon, Gyrn Goch, Wale

Review of the campsite from the groups 4 day trip there at the end of May 2011,

The site is a coastal site on the llyn peninsular, located just outside the hamlet of Grny Goch, getting to the site is really easy either from Gryn Goch, about 10 miles West of Caernarfon, and off the A499 and Pwllheli that is around 9 miles south of the site along the A499.

The first Impression you get is when you get to the entrance of the site, if you are driving to fast, even when looking for the entrance you can easily drive past it, and the entrance looks like any ordinary farm access road, then entrance is really narrow, and I would hate to have to take a 17ft caravan down the entrance road, the road down to the site is steep and really narrow, with a few tight turns, there is only 2 passing points along this road, and if meeting a vehicle mid way will result in a long reverse in your car, to one of the passing points, its better to get a passenger to walk down to check the road is clear, and if you don’t have any, a couple of the 446 licence free hand held radios are worth their weight in gold for this especially. Once you get to the office to book in, there is a small car park here, and this is where the site shop is located it is also the site owner’s home. Once you have booked in and paid for your stay, you are given a map to show you where your pitches are, the fire point’s, toilet blocks and showers are located. The shop does have a small selection of every day items milk, bread, sausage bacon and also bags of wood so you can have fires on the beach to watch the sunset. There is also an ice cream van that visits every day around 2pm, and there is normally a queue for him, even considering his prices.

The site is split into 3 fields, with each field having its own toilet block, washing up facility and chemical waste point, there is only 1 shower block on site and this is where the site is a little of a let down, as the shower block is located by the side of the entrance road, and there is a 20p charge for the shower usage this gives around 3 min’s of water, this can be really hot or luke warm, most people drive to the shower block and at times there can be a long wait.

The site does have its own beach, but this isn't a sandy beach, its really rocky, and has launch facilities for boats that many seemed to use when we stayed there. There is also a children’s play area on site also.

With the site being directly on the coast, it can be really windy at times, as many of the pitches are fully exposed, when booking online you can ask for a sheltered pitch but at the time we didn't do that, so we had really exposed pitches, and the first 2 nights were windy, so much that one of our party had to re peg his tent at 4am on the first night. I would suggest using 8” pegs and delta pegs for pitching, as I had forgot to pack my delta pegs and only had 8” pegs, and these held the tent firm and stable.

The stay we had was a good weather week, during the day the temperature was 16C to around 21C, the night temperature dropped to around 9 or 10C. I would think that if the whether was bad, it would make a terrible stay especially with it the site being so exposed to the elements. Prices are reasonable but beware the week we stayed was after the bank holiday, but with it being a school holiday also, the pitches have a minimum price of £14 per night, this is fine if you are a family of 2 adults and more, but solo campers will still have to pay £14 per pitch during this time. There are plenty of EHU’s and all are 10amps, they are set up for 2 pitches per EHU point. Pitch sizes vary, but most seemed to be around 10 meters square, but with the size of the fields there didn’t seem to be an issue with the depth of the pitch, it was more of a case of use what you need. .

After the trip we had a chat about if we would go back to the site again, and surprisingly the vote was yes, but we would be requesting sheltered pitches and something a little closer to the shower block, everybody agreed that the facilities needed improving like more showers and shower blocks and better road access.