On the 16th March we made our way to Longleat forest Center parcs, unaware that we would be back at home in two days!
we arrived at Center parcs around 3pm and headed down to our lodge. The accommodation we were staying in was beautiful! We had three bedrooms all with en suites, an open plan kitchen, dining room & lounge with a log burner, a sauna and a patio outside!
The first thing we did was unpack our bags and put the suitcases back into the car (I cannot live out of a suitcase!) we got familiar with our acclimation and how everything works before heading out to explore!
the first place we went was the plaza. I couldn’t believe my eyes when we walked inside it was absolutely amazing! There is a pond which goes from the middle floor to the bottom floor. The children absolutely loved watching the fish swim around!
Also in the plaza we’re gift shops, an ice cream shops, swimming pool and the market. I was pleasantly surprised by their market as they had everything you would need for your stay. (Due to the pandemic most supermarket shelves are bare, so I was worried it might be like this in the market here too!)
that evening we went back to the lodge and made dinner before settling the children down for the night. Darcy was so good she went to bed around 7pm and stayed asleep until 7am the next morning.
Harry however had other plans, he went to sleep around 7.30pm (usual time) and only stayed asleep for 30 mins. It all went downhill from there and I knew I was in for a bad night! 🙈 i decided around midnight to bring his travel cot into my room in the hope that he would sleep better. Thankfully he did stay asleep after that and I was able to get a good nights sleep. The whole time he was on and off crying I felt so extremely anxious and all these questions were running through my mind…. was there anyone in the lodge next door!? could they hear Harry crying!? Was it spoiling their break!? Upon writing this and reflecting it was so silly of me to worried about such a small thing like that, after all he is only a baby of 6 months and babies do cry!
The next morning we woke up completely unaware that this would be our last day. We walked the entire park this day just to see where everything was.
We went on an electric boat – the highlight of this was when we all put our life jackets on I could barley get my arms round Harry as the jackets doubled our size! 😂 on the boat Darcy learned a new work ‘duck’. It was lovely having the ducks swim past our boat and watching Darcy’s face light up with excitement! I found the boat extremely difficult to steer and nearly ended up in the bank a few times! 🤦♀️ It was such a laugh though and we all really enjoyed ourselves!
after the boat we went back to the lodge to get something to eat and get our swimming costumes on.
When we arrived at the pool we put all our stuff into lockers and put the children’s buoyancy aids on. For Darcy we have the splash about vest and for Harry we have a free swimming baby ring. Walking up the pool I was preparing myself to heading into a cold pool but it was heated – pure bliss! For me there is nothing worse than a cold swimming pool 🥶 we swam around for about 10 minutes before heading into the outside pool which was even warmer than the inside one!
all in all the swimming pool was so much with so many different things to do!
as we were walking out of the plaza to head back to the lodge we noticed a sign to say that the park would be closing on Friday, we decided to take the children back to the lodge so i could make them their dinner and my mum would go back to the customer services desk. When she went back she was told that their had been a suspected case of corona virus at the medical centre earlier on in the day and that they would be closing the park on Friday. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or to to stay. We both agreed we would much rather go home and be safe than put ourselves at risk! So we packed up our bags and we headed home!
Center parcs have been in touch with us and have allowed us to come back later in year, which we are really looking forward too.
if you haven’t been to center parcs before I would really recommend it. No matter what your budget is there is a lodge for everyone! If you are on a budget I would really recommend going from Monday – Friday (like we had planned) as the price nearly doubled over the weekend! ❤️
Chantelle’s blog 