There are times that we all need a bit of down time and an opportuity to recharge our batteries and that's exactly what the C family have been doing for the last few days. A holiday with a toddler is never going to be completely relaxing, but this one had a pretty good stab at it.
We booked a weekend break at Centre Parcs Sherwood Forest, somewhere that Mr C and I visited years ago before LMC was on the scene. That visit we spent our time doing things like clay pigeon shooting and 4×4 driving – things were a bit different this time, but actually just as much fun.
One of the big benefits of Centre Parcs is that everything is set up for kids. The villa we booked came with a highchair and travel cot (although we had to take our own cot bedding) and you are never far from baby changing facilties or a play ground. That in itself just takes some of the stress out of things. All the restaurants on site have highchairs available as well as comprehensive children's menus. When ordering meals the children's options were brought incredibly quickly and restaurants also had either play areas or gave out colouring sets when you sat down at your table.
For LIttle Miss C one of the biggest attractions had to be the Tropical Swimming Paridise. This place is huge and contains a bar, Starbucks and plenty of seating around the pool too. In addition to the main pool and slides there is also a toddler pool and a couple of children's slides too.
One excellent idea (that I only actually found out about by googling the name when I saw it in the pool timetable) is something called "Baby Dolphins". The pool normally opens at 10am, but on certain days of the week (in particular the Saturday and Tuesdays that are the first mornings of most people's stay), the pool opens half an hour early for under threes and their parents only. This gives you the opportunity to introduce children to the pool environment whilst it is quiet. Part of the main pool is opened and various inflatables are put out for the children to play with. A member of staff also gets in the water and runs through some nursery rhymes and actions which introduce an increased level of splashing as things go on. For children like LMC who don't go swimming that often I thought this was an excellent idea and there were quite a few parents there taking advantage of this (free) session. At 10am the pool did become increasingly busy and I can see how some small children may be completely overwhelmed if their first experience of the pool was with it filled with people. It was just a shame that it wasn't better advertised or explained.
It wasn't just the big things that LMC enjoyed whilst we were away though. The onsite supermarket had little trolleys and she had a ball pushing one of those round whilst we got in some essentials. A display of creme eggs did come into some danger though in the process!
To get around the site we hired bikes and also a child seat to go on the back of one of them for LMC. She sees her Daddy cycle off to the station most mornings, but this opportunity to go on Daddy's bike with him blew her mind. The addition of a cycle helmet that was like Daddy's, but even better as it was pink, just enhanced the experience further for her.
We took a bag of toys with us for Little MIss C to play with whilst we were in our villa, but in the end this proved to be completely unnecessary. As soon as we enetered villa LMC headed straight to the floor to ceiling blackboard that was in the kitchen/dining area. This genius idea was accompanied by a (plastic) bowl full of coloured chalks and an eraser. From first thing in a morning until last thing at night LMC spent ages drawing on the blackboard or getting us to draw things for her. She completely loved it and it was a brilliant way of keeping her occupied whilst we unpacked and packed bags.
We were blessed with good weather whilst we were there and exploring outdoors was a perfect activity for us all. The amount of nature on the site was amazing. There were ducks, rabbits and squirrels all over the place and Mr C also got some great pictures of toads and tree creepers that I'm sure will be appearing on UK Nature Blog soon. LMC did repeatedly call the whole site our "garden" and at one point got quite upset when she realised that other people were in "her garden"! Taking her into the outside part of the swimming pool blew her mind and the whole time she kept saying that we were "swimming in the garden". You can see her logic can't you.
The weekend was a fantastic get away and it really did make us feel like we'd been somewhere a million miles away from home. My relaxed feeling was greatly helped by the mum-to-be pampering session that I had at the spa, but even without that I'm pretty sure that I would have still come home feeling recharged. Of course, as with any trips, there were a few moments where we had a screaming toddler to deal with, but they are easily overlooked when you look at how fantastic things were overall. I'm sure we'll be going back!
Disclaimer: This weekend was paid for by ourselves and I received no financial incentive for writing this review.
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