Wardens going far above and beyond their duty
I feel that is always worth mentioning when someone or an organisation goes above and beyond what would be called reasonable service or duty so I have to mention what has happened to us this weekend at Harbury fields affiliated site
We decided to try here as we couldn’t get in to one of our more regular sites at late availability; we would have by choice gone to Morton in the marsh or Broadway but couldn’t get a pitch as we only decided to go last weekend.
Things went a bit array for us from the start and wife found on Thursday she had to work late the Friday we were setting of on. As we didn’t want to abandon the weekend we decided I would take the motor home down and Bev would come down later after work
in her car.
Due to some local road works and the Sat nav getting location completely wrong (hers is a Garmin took her to somewhere 3 miles away, my Tom Tom was spot on). To cut the story short she couldn’t find the way so she parked on a pub and called for help, I tried
to get a Taxi to go to her but Friday night there was no chance for at least an hour or longer.
I went to the office to ask for directions to the pub intending to walk (by now the motor home was all but set up) but as soon as the warden on duty understood our predicament he rang his wife and within 5 minutes she was driving me to the pub were my wife
was left stranded, lost and very stressed.
She absolutely refused any money from me for her time and Petrol despite my efforts to give her some so we settled on me giving her some money to donate to their supported charity a local hospice.
Needles to say the help and commitment shown to us on this occasion went far and above the call of duty for a site warden even if the owner of the site and we could not be more grateful to them for their help as you can imagine we rate the owners of this
private site very highly.
The site is also exceptional and will become one of our 2 or 3 times a year regulars for short weekends but I have reviewed that else wear. It is not my intention here to praise the site just the fantastic help and service I found at the site on my first
visit.
Comments
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Thanks for that report RoyandBev. Really good to know there are some really helpful people about. Years ago we had help from the owners of a site when we were having problems. My car had broken down on the way to the site and when we eventually arrived on the back of a tow truck, my wife them fell down and badly hurt her ankle. We had to send for an ambulance to take us to hospital. The site owners offered to collect us from A & E. I wrote a bit of an amusing story about it HERE.
Really pleased you got some good help.
David
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RoyandBev, when our youngest son and family lived in Harbury, this site was a regular stop off for us. We always found the owners very helpful and willing, haven't been for 2 years but I can bet we would still find it a lovely place to stay.
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Really good service from the wardens there......well done to them!
But you have to say......women drivers!!!???
Well I might be tempted to agree (don’t tell her) but the next day we went out to Bicester village and on way back I used her sat nav with correct post code and low and behold it announced “You have arrived at destination” about 3 and half miles away from
where we were supposed to be and wrong side of village.Put my Tom Tom on with same post code and took us right there, never trust a sat nav or at least that one in her car. Once again a big thanks to the wardens.
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Garmin is proving to be unpredictable for me too. It took me in just about a complete circle last week and over a horrid hump back bridge - luckily after I had taken the caravan off. A couple of times it took a peculiar route.
So good to hear about helpful people too.
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Fair do's Roy.......but I'd invest in a map to leave in each car if I were you.......only £1.99 from the cheap book shops.
Well Ian I do have a map and I plan all my journeys around them, I never trust a sat nav on a longer journey I will go a few miles out of my way to stay on good roads. I only use the sat nav for last few miles and always check the last few entries to make
sure it is right, I can do this on my Tom Tom camper. Unfortunately I didn’t think to do same on her GarminOn this occasion her Garmin let her down it was night, spitting with rain and in narrow country lanes but still busy so map reading on her own would have been difficult or dangerous, also the map would not have shown the closed roads or helped with the diversions
(they were confusing as well, well done Warwick council) she did the right thing finding a safe place to park and ask for help.My point of this thread is to praise the wardens of a site but you always get some self righteous know all hijack threads to demonstrate their own superiority over us mortals but I willingly bow to the superior human being that knows and has an answer to
everything.Still a very big thank you to the wardens
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R&B, it's good to see someone praising when praise is due
. Too many just view CT as a 'moanfest', we are all clever in hindsight,
we have all made mistakes too. It takes a big person to openly admit to mistakes. Good post, you had a good service from good people0 -
Really good service from the wardens there......well done to them!
But you have to say......women drivers!!!???
Well I might be tempted to agree (don’t tell her) but the next day we went out to Bicester village and on way back I used her sat nav with correct post code and low and behold it announced “You have arrived at destination” about 3 and half miles away from where we were supposed to be and wrong side of village.
Put my Tom Tom on with same post code and took us right there, never trust a sat nav or at least that one in her car. Once again a big thanks to the wardens.
agreed that you got good service....well done the warden.....
here are two tips that might help avoid a similar scenario.......
1. postcodes can cover a fairly wide area depending on the place you are visiting, so (unless you have exact coordinates, or a POI icon that is coordinate based) dont use post codes (in these dircumstances i tend to navigate to 'place on map').....
2. whatever process is used to enter directions (POI, place on map, post code etc) CHECK (with route preview) that the route in the unit is actually taking you where you think it should be AND by a viable route. a minute spent prior to leaving (and making adjustments if necessary, will save you time (and heartache) in the long run.....
good luck....
ps....it may be (as ypu say) that checking the route planned cant be done on the Garmin, if this is the case, i would go for a cheap tomtom as not being able to check (after, say, entering a wrong postcode) might bring more pain....
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A good example of why you should never trust post codes can be seen if you put the one for Altnahara CC site info Google. It puts the marker to the southern end of Altnahara village on the A836 almost 4 miles from the site on the B873.
in france they can cover vast areas of countryside.....
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The next village to my shop is called Stansted, and it's quite common for people to come in and ask where the airport is !!
i then tell them it's about 50 mile away and in a different county
So becarefull what you put in a sat-nav
There was a case a good few year back when a foreign HGV driver got off the ferry at Southhampton and drove to
Portsmouth ...... somehow he got the wrong one!0 -
Well done that partiular warden of the commercial site for helping out..
In saying that, if I'm not mistaken, you had your MotorHome on site which you could have used to meet your wife when she could not find the campsite. -- A simple case of you driving to the Pub in your own vehicle, meeting up with your wife, then she could
have followed you back to the campsite. .Just another take on your situation.
K
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We used to live in Harbury in our younger days, still have relatives locally, it's very easy to lose your way in those Warwickshire lanes. We had to miss a family get together in the Shakespeare Pub last weekend! Nice to hear about the help you received,
hope you enjoyed your stay.0 -
RoyandBev, Glad you were helped so willingly, and just what I would expect at a privately owned and privately run site like Harbury Fields.
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We've stayed at Harbury Fields a few times and always found the Wardens/Owners superb.
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My point of this thread is to praise the wardens of a site but you always get some self righteous know all hijack threads to demonstrate their own superiority over us mortals but I willingly bow to the superior human being that knows and has an answer to everything.
Still a very big thank you to the wardens
Harsh words there, Roy. I do hope they weren't aimed at me. I did agree with you that this was excellent service from the site staff.
If it makes you feel better.......I remember going to a meeting with a client, to interview contractors for a big office development. I used my sat nav on the way there and it led me to some back street on the edge of town, with just a Post Office building there - no sign of my client's offices.
So, as you do, I resorted to the map and eventually found my way there - on the other side of town!
During the meeting, one of the contractors was late arriving. The client said "I do hope they haven't used sat nav, because our post code is the local PO sorting office, where all our mail is sent"
I said not a word......just nodded in agreement.
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I have a Garmin and never had a problem in nearly 60k miles
Have to say Oneput had this Garmin one a few years fully updated and up to now never let her down (but not 60K miles perhaps 5K or less) but definatly has a diferant location tot the Tom Tom with same post code. wasnt there a problem a few years ago when
Collins left a city of one of there maps and had to reprint?i supose aanything can be false when you concider the amount of information in print or electronicly stored it is actualy ievitable some of it will not be corect.
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i was giulty of 'lazily' using a postcode the other day..
...we were heading for Concierge Camping, 3 miles to the west of Chchester....
as we were only travelling a short distance from Littlehampton, i was really sloppy and didnt even bother to check the site directions, nor match the tomtom's planned route against googlemaps....what was i thinking?
anyway, the postcode missed the site only by a quarter of a mile but, although on the correctly named road, we were heading in the wrong direction...
luckily we were able to pull onto the forecourt of a well placed Indian restaurant and i was able to check googlemaps....
a spin of the wheel and an embarrased look later and we were there....
moral...? check, then check again before taking a largish vehicle into uncharted (narrow) lanes.... i got off fairly lightly
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We've found that the postcode that the National Trust give in their address has, on several occasions, taken us to somewhere other than the public entrance to the property - usually what used to be the main entrance in times gone by.
...but theres no reason why the postcode 'should' take you to the entrance.....they cover quite a large area....
now, if the lat/long coordinates (if) given actually took ypu to the wrong place, id be surprised/annoyed
there may well be a POI file available for NT/EH sites, this would (should) be accurate....
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We've found that the postcode that the National Trust give in their address has, on several occasions, taken us to somewhere other than the public entrance to the property - usually what used to be the main entrance in times gone by.
...but theres no reason why the postcode 'should' take you to the entrance.....they cover quite a large area....
now, if the lat/long coordinates (if) given actually took ypu to the wrong place, id be surprised/annoyed
there may well be a POI file available for NT/EH sites, this would (should) be accurate....
Postcode areas can be very large. I beleieve a sat nav usually takes you to the centre of it.
Agree about the Lat/Lon co-ordinates.....we used them in France (they are given on the ACSI app) and they took us right to the site entrance every time.
Only trouble is, they show in 'recent destinations' as just the numbers and without a name, so it's hard to know which to pick if going back to a place.
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your last point is very interesting (a bit like an unknown number in a phone...) ill have a look at my tomtoms later...
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