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‘Pontins has a touch of prison about it – but I loved it’

Dinner ladies, discos and Dolly – my visit to one of the chain’s last holiday parks in Britain was brilliantly nostalgic

“And for the second time tonight, we have a guest who’s going to sing Jolene for you!” squeals Bluecoat Sara excitedly over the audience’s groans. It’s “bandaoke”, not karaoke, so – disguising their ennui with fixed-smile professionalism of which Ms Parton herself would be proud – the guitarist, bassist and drummer struck up again. And I began questioning the life choices that brought me to this place.
It’s not like I wasn’t warned. In July, Pontins was voted the worst holiday park in Britain by readers of Which? magazine; and the chain’s recent history isn’t encouraging either. Founded in 1946 by Fred Pontin, the group once boasted 30 resorts across Britain, but abruptly closed two sites “with immediate effect” last November (was it because of a “triple Jolene”, I wondered?), so there are now just two left.
I visited the Suffolk outpost, Pakefield Holiday Village, on a sunny August bank holiday weekend, and it was at around a third of its 1,000-guest capacity – though that could be partly to do with the weekend’s theme. Every break (one, three or four nights) has a theme, from “variety” (featuring a follically challenged conjurer called El Baldinhio) to “decades” (which boasts an appearance from “Tom-Tastic”, presumably a Tom Jones tribute act even though his picture makes him look more like an Alan Sugar one). My break, however, was “live & loud”, which felt risky for a clientele that is, in many cases, barely either. 
The evening entertainment kicked off with bingo – as it did every evening; and, indeed, every afternoon – and as I looked around the cabaret lounge, the average age seemed to be “mobility aid”. “Loud” seemed a mis-sell, too, as the £60 win on the bingo I witnessed got only a murmur of muted excitement, despite the high-energy efforts of the Bluecoats.
For thrill-seekers hunting a real jolt of adrenalin, however, there’s crazy golf. That’s not a sentence you read often. Still, the alternatives were either painfully dull or winningly sedate, depending on your outlook and state of coronary health (there were plenty of punters at Pontins for whom the latter was clearly a consideration). 
Ping-pong; darts; snooker; curling; a toned-down, notably jazzless version of badminton called “Jazzminton”; utterly unused tennis courts and outdoor gym; the “H2Ozone” (a swimming pool with one – closed – waterslide) – personally I quite enjoyed the gentle calmness of it all, especially when contrasted with the zip-lining-and-laser-games overload I’d experienced at rival Butlins recently. But Pontins’ 1950s feel won’t be to everyone’s taste.
There’s something agreeably old-fashioned about the food, too. At lunch, I had ham, egg and chips (I’d only wanted egg and chips, but the hair-netted, dinner-lady-like woman behind the counter said that wasn’t an option). The café is un-charmingly located next to the slot machine arcade, so I took my food to a picnic table outside and there, in the sun, soundtracked by seagulls and with the tang of the sea air mixing with the salt and vinegar, I had a lunch I enjoyed as much as any this year.
I dreaded dinner though. My break cost me £45 a night, half board (there are others available for as little as £29 a night HB) and, really, what kind of food can you get for that money? Where I expected reconstituted chicken beaks and non-specific beige slurry, however, I found a buffet with proper quarters of pretty nice peri-peri chicken, some great scampi, something nice and mushroomy for vegetarians, and a choice of veg, salads, rice, jacket potatoes and, of course, chips. It was all – yes, I had it all, OK? – of a perfectly decent quality, even if the huge, utilitarian restaurant had echoes (literally; it was very loud) of a prison canteen.
The rooms (sorry, “apartments”) had a touch of HMP Pakefield about them, too: sub-Ikea furniture, a single chair, a tiny television, the smell of stale fags from curtains that presumably hadn’t been changed since the smoking ban, and a notice explaining that guests who punch holes in the doors would be reported to police. The ultimate jailbreak is about 200 yards beyond your apartment doorstep, however: the beach out front is an absolute beauty. Endlessly long and wide, with nice wild dunes behind and a shallow, shingly slope into the calm sea, the soft, caramel sands were inexplicably empty. So I sat for a while and shook my head disbelievingly that this was all mine for £45.
There’s plenty at Pontins that’s tatty or tacky – a mini Manneken Pis urinating into the central pond, for instance; or the Bluecoat-led line-dancing session I endured as part of the evening’s entertainment – but there’s perhaps even more that’s nostalgically enjoyable or just plain, honest-to-goodness fun (certainly, everyone I spoke to, from blue-rinse regulars to exuberant hen parties, were relishing it all.) Each evening ended with a disco, and it was like the lovely later stages of a big family wedding: octogenarians, 18-year-olds, people in wheelchairs, high-kicking hens, a cohort of special-needs youngsters – everyone on the floor was YMCA-ing along together with precisely zero thought of trying to look cool or impressing anyone.
If you abandon yourself to it, let go of your dignity, discernment, inhibitions, ingrained notions of good taste, you can have a brilliant time at Pontins. I certainly did. In fact, now would perhaps be a good moment to come clean: that second person going up to belt out Jolene was me, and I was beaming.
Pontins offers one-night breaks from £45 per person, half board.

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