Pinewood Holiday Park

We met in 1992, and after realising how like-minded and driven we both were, we decided to open our first business. While we were quite young (18 & 23), we opened our first retail and wholesale fruit and veg shop. We bought a lease, set the shop up from scratch and moved into the small flat above – our first home.

We then had 2 lovely sons, Jordan and Bradley, born within a year of each other.

When we first opened our fruit shop, there were just 2 supermarkets. By 1999 there were 4!

We decided that if we couldn’t beat them, then we had to join them! We approached the manager of our local KwikSave supermarket and persuade him to let us take over the fruit and veg franchise in there, as the present operator was doing a very poor job.

We had 6 extremely successful years in KwikSave and made a decent profit for both KwikSave and ourselves.

Somerfield took over all KwikSaves around the country and gave all franchisees 1 month to leave their units empty, clean and tidy. We were devastated.

We had since moved into our dream home, and knew there was no way of paying the mortgage with just the income from our original little fruit and veg shop.

We decided to sell the lease on the business and our dream house, and emigrate and start a fresh!

It wasn’t very long before we realised that we didn’t want to leave our friends and family, or Sunny Scarborough, and we started to look at other options.

We came across a property, which we thought had huge potential and we put in an offer.

Over the past six and a half years, we have turned a very small caravan park into a Wild West adventure. Each year we have added to and improved our site, and we now have a caravan area with hard standings, a camping field, and a Wild West campground, complete with hand-made Tipis, modern Tipis, Cowboy Camping Shacks and Western Wagons. We also have a Cowboy Saloon which we use as an indoor venue for Birthdays, Weddings and corporate events.

In 2009 we were nominated for best Holiday Park in Yorkshire, in 2010 we were #SBS winners, and in 2011 we were regional winners of British Rail’s Hidden Gems award.

We have just been featured on TV for the fourth time, and have had huge amounts of press coverage in newspapers and magazines.

Each year we improve on the previous year, and are very proud of what we have achieved.

We now rely on the help of our 2 sons to help with the business, and we are very proud of their customer service skills.

We have some great expansion plans for the business and we see a very exciting time ahead.