This was our second Real Family Holiday having been at Juniper Hall last year. The standard of the accommodation varies greatly depending upon whether you are in one of the refurbished rooms or not. The refurbished rooms are very nice indeed with great touches such as personal lights in each bunk. The older rooms are what I would call “1970s youth hostel” and need some money spending to upgrade them. The activities were good. My children are older and found the Ropes course and the Leap of Faith to be enjoyable. They very much enjoyed the raft building and sailing it on the loch ss well. The centre activity staff were very good with the kids. The grounds at Kindrogan are wonderful. There is a river running through the grounds which is easy for the kids to play in and a lovely wooded area is also easily accessible. The real bonus to this place is the wildlife. Red squirrels are everywhere and we saw wild deer on the lawn early morning and pine martins in the evening. The two negative points about Kindrogan that I do have to share are firstly the quality of the food. This wasn’t a patch on the food we had at Juniper Hall nor the food we had the following week at Malham Tarn. Although special diets were catered for I did feel it was a big struggle for the staff to accommodate a simple request for plain pasta rather than pasta with sauce on. Also, my daughter asked for chicken one night and was told we couldn’t have it because it was halal and only for the halal people. The other negative point is the fact that the bar at Kindrogan had an adults only bar. Whilst I appreciate this is what some people want when school trips are catered for, when you are a single parent with a child you do not come on holiday for the child to sit on their own in the kids lounge and you to sit on your own in the adults lounge.
