At the conclusion of my account of our first stay at Warner Hotels Lakeside on Hayling Island I indicated that it had been okay – not brilliant, not bad – but that we likely wouldn’t rush back. It might then be somewhat surprising to discover that a mere two months later we decided to take the short drive from our home in Portsmouth to Hayling Island once again, this time for a 1960s-themed weekend of entertainment. Given that neither of us was born in that decade and that my knowledge of most of its music was substantially limited, it might be even more of a surprise. And that’s not all; we mentioned we were doing this to my wife’s parents and they decided they’d like to join us. We’d been together over a quarter of a century and this would be the first time we’d taken any sort of extended break with my in-laws. What were we thinking? Well, we were thinking that there was a bank holiday coming up on the Monday and that a three-night weekend break anywhere would be preferable to not having one at all.
This is the first of two posts covering our second weekend break on Hayling Island at Warner Lakeside and it will mostly cover the first full day there where we decided to take advantage of the nice weather to stroll along the beach.
For this second visit to our nearest Warner Leisure Hotels location we chose a Woodland Lodge class of accommodation as we’d spotted them on our previous visit and thought they looked very nice. They did look very nice, both inside and out, and we very much enjoyed our stay in this particular room. However, if I was the sort of person who offered up unwanted advice on the web – and I am – then I would suggest that in the summer, this is a great choice, but in the colder months – and it wasn’t particularly warm when we visited – then something else might be preferable. At night we discovered that the room got quite cold thanks to the large, single-glazed doors and windows not far from the bed and the general construction of the lodge.
As with our first visit to Warner Lakeside we decided to pay a little extra for the VIP package, which offers tokens for free drinks in addition to a guaranteed good view of the stage for the entertainment and a waiter-summoning lamp. We would discover that the drinks tokens were not quite as useful as they’d been when we visited two months earlier. On that occasion we’d chosen any drinks from the menu. Great. On this occasion we were told that no, we couldn’t pick from the cocktails, we could only have the basic drinks. This isn’t something that we could see mentioned on the website and if it was on the tickets then it required a high-powered microscope to read it in the small print. Disappointing from Warner that this wasn’t made clear.
The dinner menu and food choices of my wife and me are below, in case you’re interested in what range of food and what sort of quality of food you can expect to have at a Warner Leisure hotel.
That’s the arrival at Lakeside and the first evening’s meal covered. Obviously, there were drinks had and we listened to a few cover bands performing 1960s hits alongside a DJ who allegedly let you make requests via an internet form but who steadfastly refused to play anything we requested all weekend long while repeatedly playing the same tunes every night. And no, we weren’t picking stupid tracks, although I was beginning to get around to adding snarky comments on the requests by the end.
Saturday arrived on Hayling Island and, after all meeting up for breakfast, and in accordance with the rough plan we’d agreed upon the night before, we decided to head off for a walk from the hotel down to the beach with the intention being to stroll along it in one direction and get the narrow gauge railway that ran along its length in the other.
The conditions were bright and reasonably warm as we headed out of Lakeside beside, as you can see, the lake that lends the hotel its name.
The route to the beach is dead easy. Head west out of the main entrance of the hotel until you can’t head west any longer, then head south until your feet start getting wet. You have arrived at your destination.
In addition to some art bits and pieces we discovered a set of stocks. These were replica stocks of an original set that for some reason Hayling Island considers speaks about its nature. “Come to Hayling Island. We have a beach. We have the means to punish you in public.” Perhaps they’re trying to attract a certain type of person.
As the train wasn’t at the easternmost end of the railway when we hit this part of Hayling Island beach we decided that we’d walk to its terminus at the west end then come back by powered means. We headed down onto the promenade and were immediately distracted by what we initially thought was a rescue at sea taking place by the coastguard. After watching for a few minutes and seeing the helicopter lowering the rescued person back into the water we realised that they’d either had their debit card declined and had insufficient funds to pay for their rescue or that we were witnessing rescue drills instead.
It turned out that Her Majesty’s Coastguard were, indeed, practising rescues with their helicopter and a boat just off the coast of Hayling Island and, even better, they next decided to do this in the shallow water far closer to off just off the pebble beach. This gave me plenty of opportunities to take photos and that’s exactly what I and several dozen other people along the seafront ended up doing for quite some time. If you want to see photographs and video of the coastguard helicopter at work then you’re now in for a treat.
We eventually decided to continue walking along the seafront. This route took us alongside the shoreline train tracks and the brick building for the army cadets before coming upon the colourful beach huts.
A stone monument caught our eyes, as it likely was supposed to do. This menhir with an almost Aztec-looking design on it was the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) memorial. Not a lot is known about the activities of the COPP, set up on Hayling Island in 1943, but it trained army and navy personnel for covert actions as frogmen and canoeists.
Our walk came to an end when we reached Funland, the amusement park on Hayling Island. Out of the main season it didn’t exactly scream fun to any of us so we gave it a miss but I’m sure there are plenty of things to see and do there if you’re visiting with kids.
The other reason for terminating our walk where we did was because that was where we would be able to board the Hayling Seaside Railway for the return to the east end of the seafront. The railway was opened to the public in 2003. The train we ended up riding on was No. 3 Jack, built in 1988, and diesel-powered like all the trains operating on the 2-foot narrow gauge tracks even though it looks like a classic steam locomotive scaled down. It was a very pleasant way to make the journey back along the beach.
As we were on holiday it felt only right to have a quick drink in a nearby pub once we’d disembarked the train, and the Lifeboat Inn provided some good options, friendly staff, and a nice, large garden in which to enjoy the sunshine.
Hayling Island doesn’t have a huge amount to see, and we’d pretty much covered most of it by now so we simply headed back to the Lakeside hotel next.
The afternoon and evening at Warner Lakeside were pretty much as you’d expect: relaxed, casual, a few drinks, some of the snacks from our hotel room welcome basket out on our lodge’s porch, some reading in the sunshine, a bit of trivia (no, we didn’t win), then dinner – the evening menu and our dining choices are shown below – and entertainment from the bands. One criticism from this sort of break – billed as a 1960s music tribute weekend – was that the bands all played covers of what they considered great tracks from the decade (and in some cases, other decades too, bizarrely) but there was no coordination between the sets that they were performing; the result of this was that a lot of songs got played multiple times. Okay if you like the tracks or don’t mind hearing the same tune three times a night, but something we felt could have been avoided with a little bit of discussion and tweaking of playlists. Still, plenty of people got up and danced around and enjoyed themselves a lot.
In the concluding part of this coverage of our second stay at Warner Lakeside on Hayling Island I’ll go through the second day’s activities which mostly just involved a walk along the eastern shoreline.