A Weekend at Center Parcs Elveden Forest - Part One

A room in the Lakeside View Hotel

Mid June came around, Tony had planned to meet up with his old work mates for the weekend and climb or at least walk up Snowdon. They were booked into a pub near Fairy Falls and that left Lauren and I at a loose end. 

A few weeks before the boys were due to go away I thought maybe I could take Lauren to Sherwood Forest Center Parcs, but the prices for the 1 bedroomed villa were well over £400. While browsing I remembered that the Elveden Forest village in Suffolk they have a small hotel next to the lake. It used to be called the Sheldrake, named after some of the local ducks, but it's now fittingly called Lakeside View. I checked it out and they had availability, £239 for the room from Friday to Monday, it seemed reasonable, £80 per night. The room was described as an executive 1 bedroomed apartment, an en-suite room, with tea and coffee facilities, a small fridge and a television and maid service. We had enjoyed it last time we went to Elveden so I decided to book it.

I managed to keep the holiday a secret from Lauren right up to the Friday morning. I had told her snippets, but not mentioned Center Parcs...would you like to go pottery painting on Saturday?,,,shall we go swimming on Friday?...do you fancy getting up really early on Sunday and going on a Woodland Walk?....."yes, yes, yes..but why can't we go to Center Parcs?" she asked! Once she'd found out I was glad I'd managed to keep it quiet. She was so excited, babbling away and planning our every last second as we travelled.

We set off at about 9 o'clock and with only one stop along the way and only 2 misunderstandings between me and the Sat Nav Lady we were there just after midday.

It was too early to get into our room and we weren't doing the pottery until 2pm, so we decided to find some lunch. All weekend I meant for us to go to Dexters, an Center Parcs version of a fast food restaurant, the menu sounded good and the food looked decent for it's type. We never got round to it to my disappointment as food ended up being the most disappointing part of the visit and we were dependant on what was on offer as we didn't have self catering facilities.

We settled on Café Rouge as we'd had nice food there at Sherwood at Christmas. Lauren ordered the Ham and Cheese Melts with french fries and salad from the children's menu and I ordered the Croque Monsieur. The food came quickly and Lauren really enjoyed her melts, there were 3 pieces of baguette with ham and cheese it was quite a big portion for a child. I was not so impressed with mine, the salad was a definite after thought, the bread was dry and sawdusty and the fries were luke warm and average and the meal wasn't cheap at nearly £25 just for lunch including our drinks.

Croque Monsieur

Cheese and Ham Melts

Once lunch was over we headed back to the Lakeside View Hotel. As well as being our accommodation, it was also where the pottery studio was. We'd paid a small deposit to book our places, once there we had to choose our pots and get painting, the snake and the bowl were both around £8.50 each, but there was a range of shapes from simple to more intricate, going up to about £30. The studio would fire them for you and you could pick them up later in your stay. This is the second time we have done this activity and we both really enjoy it, it's a good way to get a little creative but with some guidance. It's not straight forward as the colours you paint on are not as they will look once fired, but they have samples to show you and in order to get a good colour you need to ensure you paint 3 coats of each colour and work from light to dark.

My new breakfast bowl before firing

Snake eyes!

When we'd finished it was definitely time to get into our accommodation, but Lauren had other ideas and off to the Sub Tropical Swimming Paradise we went. We got drawn into the swim shop Aquatique on the way. We bought a weighted ring for Lauren to dive for and I tried on a couple of very expensive swimming costumes, but decided not to bother this time. We'd picked a great time to swim as most people were getting their cars and settling into their villas. The Subtropical Swimming Paradise is really the flagship area in any Center Parcs. It boasts that it's always 86 degrees (29.5C) although sometimes I find that hard to believe! It's a blue lagoon with a main swimming areas surrounded by patio'd seating areas, rockery walls, a Café called The Canopy which looked to be serving up pretty good food at a reasonable price, although the drinks both alcoholic and none alcoholic are pricey. There are private cabanas (that you have to pay extra for) where you can sit and relax and watch a bit of telly, the main pool has a wave machine, there is a lazy river, an outdoor pool with plunge pool and of course the rapids, which are not too hair raising but really good fun. They are currently building a new ride, due to open in November 2012, which will apparently be the only one of it's kind, check it out here. The real bonus of the swimming is that unlike most things at Center Parcs it's totally free, although the play areas are free and of course the fresh air and environment on the village are too.

I swam with Lauren for about an hour and then retired to my garden chair at the edge of the pool and wrapped in a towel, read my Kindle and waited for Lauren to get bored. Lauren continued to swim and swim and swim until suddenly I realised it was 7 o'clock! 

                     

We hurried out and went for our tea, we couldn't get in to Bella Italia, so not wanting to go back to Café Rouge we headed over to the Sports Café for some standard pub fayre. Lauren had tomato pasta and I had scampi and chips, prices were reasonable for an evening meal, no prizes for presentation or style though it tasted OK!

Spying on the play area

Outside the Sports Bar was a couple of well equipped play areas and Lauren went out for a play while I watched a bit of sport on the giant screens. The European Cup was on, so it was obviously football.

Scampi

Tomato pasta

And so it was at least half past eight before we started to head for our car and gone 9 o'clock before we began the tiring task of unloading the car and taking the car back to the car park, especially as our room was right at the end of a very long corridor.

So no sooner had we unpacked then we were ready for bed, it had been a very long day.

Not before taking a look at our room though. A little disappointing. We've stayed in Woodland and Executive villas at Center Parcs lots of times, so when the room was described as Executive I was expecting a bit more, it was a lot like the tired Best Western I'd stayed in last year, nothing too much to complain about, quite clean, tidy, comfortable, everything you need, but it didn't meet my expectation of what "Executive" means at Center Parcs.

Having said that it met our needs from the respect of a place to rest our heads and get a good nights sleep ready for the weekends activities (continued in part 2 - see next blog).

Time for bed :-)