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andrewduckerCenter Parcs is a very strange mix of nature and artifice, taking the rough countryside and melding it into something more palatable for people that would love to spend time outside in the wild, but find actually dealing with it more trouble than it's worth.
All of which sounds a tad disdainful, but actually it's a lovely place to visit for a few days. The compromise between natural beauty and artificial comforts produces occasional strangenesses (bundles of "freshly chopped wood" lie beside the path at one point, held in place by metal cables) that are more reminiscent of Disneyland than anything else, but it's undeniably very pretty, and watching parents feeding the ducks with their children, or wandering the (very nicely laid out) paths through the woods it's clear that any grouching is solely an immature rebellion against bourgeois comfort rather than because anything is actually wrong with the place.
Julie and I took the train down to from Edinburgh to Penrith, which is only about an hour and a half - not significantly longer than the journey to Glasgow, although it seems much further somehow (it is, after all, in a different country). The long curves set Julie's travel sickness off a bit, distracting her from the game of Icewind Dale that she had freshly installed onto her laptop (rescuing her save-game from her desktop before we left). While we didn't have Wi-Fi on the trip, I was happy to let her have the plug point, and I read my book (I'd just started the third book in the Pliocene Exile series at that point, and had bought the remaining volume, as well as Intervention, the vinculum between it and the Galactic Milieu trilogy, and Nation - the new Pratchett).
We arrived at Penrith station dead on time, fished out the bus timetable that Julie had printed out, and realised that, as Monday was a bank holiday, rather than a leisurely 45 minute wander to the bus station we had just 13 minutes to find our way to the bus station (and then a three hour gap in buses). We arrived just as the last person was getting onto the bus, and annoyed the driver by only having a tenner for our joint £1.70 in fare. Everyone else on the bus was also going to the resort - but we were the only guests, everyone else was working there. Clearly most people arrive by car!
We arrived safely though, and they checked us in, before telling us that they'd not only take our suitcases to our apartment, but as they didn't have much else to take over they'd give Julie and I a lift over too. This was great, as the resort is really quite large - and the driver was able to point out a few places along the way, like the bike-rental shop (a huge warehouse). I was a bit nervous about cycling - I'd agreed to rent a bike for the stay, but I hadn't ridden once since I was 11, except when I tried again once at aged 14 and fell off three times in a row before giving up! Various people had reassured me that you couldn't forget, but I wasn't at all confident.
We arrived at our home, at Lakeside Apartments, and dragged our bags up the stairs. We'd gone for a single-bedroom apartment rather than an actual villa, as those were all multi-bedroom which seemed like overkill. Instead we had a very comfortable two-room setup. One of the rooms is about 30 feet long by 15 feet wide, with a kitchen at one end, a sofa/TV in the middle, and a desk over by the windows at the other end, and a small door to a balcony overlooking the woods. Off to one side is the sleeping area, with the TV artfully set up on a rotating stand, so that it can be watched from the sofa or the bed. It's not at all cramped for two people, and the kitchen had been large enough for me to make breakfasts very happily (it's got nearly as much storage space as my kitchen at home and _more_ preparation space). The other room is the bathroom/shower/toilet, again of a decent size, being about the same as most hotel bathrooms I've stayed in - fantastic (if slightly variable) water pressure. It's even got a spare chair or two, in case one of us wanted to hog the sofa (or entertain visitors). The overall effect was quite luxurious.
We then headed down to the bike shop and picked up two bikes, along with locks and helmets, and rode round in circles for a few minutes to get the hang of it. Despite my worrying I picked it up very quickly - as did Julie, who revealed to me that _she_ hadn't ridden a bike since she was 11 either. We were both very grateful that there weren't many cars around - cars are forbidden in the grounds outside of a dropping-off slot on Monday and a picking-up slot on Friday - because we wobbled back and forth a lot until we got the hang of things. We stopped at the village centre on the way back, and bought some food/drink/tea/etc. at the shop, which was very well stocked and not nearly as unreasonably priced as I'd feared. We also investigated the restaurants and checked the opening times of the pool. Sorry, the "subtropical swimming paradise", of which I'll speak more later. We then cycled back to the apartment and unpacked our groceries.
We ordered Chinese take-away and then went for a walk around the lake, as it was going to take half an hour for the food to be ready. The arrangements of small homes in clusters with small clumps of forestry in-between brought to mind nothing so much as the design of villages in World of Warcraft or Fable - clearly artificial, but picturesque. We were struck by a fancy to come back at some point with two other couples, and rent one of the cottages.
We then picked up the food, which was...ok. Nothing special, but perfectly edible. Also, not vastly cheaper than it would have been to just eat out, so I recommend you do that instead. And then we went to try out the sub-tropical swimming paradise. Which isn't _just_ a pool - it's about 10 different pools, ranging from large Jacuzzis to a large bifurcated area with a wave machine in it, as well as areas joined by a slide (where water fell in waves from a platform above, an outdoor heated pool, and a loop around an island, half of which was indoor, half was outside. There's nothing quite like being in warm water with your head poking out into cold air.
(You can't take photos inside it, so here's a couple of photos of the outside of the pools, and of the outside of the "river rapids" flume, which is also outside)
Julie can't swim, so we spent some time in one of the quieter pools, working on the basics of "not drowning" and building some confidence, before going into the larger pool and sploshing about in the waves, and then exploring the rest of the complex. The air is kept at a constant 29.5 degrees, and it's lovely being able to wander about without getting cold.
Then we went to sleep, and slept fantastically - from 10:30 until 11:00 the next day. Best night's sleep we've had in a while! I’d seen adverts for Sealy mattresses before, but I’d never slept on one – it managed to be supportive, firm and comfortable at the same time.
Tuesday was much busier. I made a fry-up for breakfast (a tradition we’ve come to love) and then we decided to start off with a bike ride around the whole complex. We stopped off at the sports centre and booked a badminton game for the evening before heading on a long circuit around the whole village - which took us about an hour, and then we spent another hour in the pool, and then we played badminton. We then did a tour of the different restaurants before ending up at the French restaurant, where I had the Bouef Bourguignon with Potatoes Dauphinoise and Julie had the Chicken in a white wine sauce and Herb Mash, both of which actually were very good, and served from someone who may not have been actually French, but was from the continent and carried off the necessary dishevelled grumpiness masterfully. And then we fell over, exhausted and with aching muscles, and continued the French theme by watching the first half of Amelie in bed.
Today (Wednesday) my arms were aching enough, but we'd booked ourselves into a 2pm slot to go on the climbing wall, so after breakfast and (naked) pottering around the flat we headed off to it. Neither Julie nor I is great with heights, but I've been climbing at Alien Rock a couple of times, so I was more secure with it - I managed to make it all the way to the top three of the four times I went up (on different routes). Julie was more worried by the heights, and had never been climbing before - but she had a fantastic time, although it did take about half an hour for the shaking to stop. Then more lunch at the lakeside, before heading back to the to write up the holiday up to this point.
(Continued on the train back home - Friday at midday)
We were completely exhausted on Wednesday afternoon, after our long day on Tuesday and our climbing experience - clinging onto the rock really took it out of both of us, as it uses muscles that neither of us even knew we had! So we took Wednesday evening off, watching the rest of Amelie, and wandering into the village centre to pick up some food for us to make. Looking through the ingredients at the shop we realised that it was tailored more to parents making food for their families than it was to a couple wanting to make a meal for two.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nmg had warned us to bring a sharp knife and a decent pan, both of which the apartment had come with, but neither of us had thought to bring with herbs, spices, salt, etc. - which meant that we'd have had to buy some and either take them home after the end of the holiday, or throw them away when we left. So in the end we went to Bella Italia, and had some nice pasta - which was nicer than the takeout, if not up to the same level as the French food of Tuesday night. We flopped into bed and collapsed for an early night.
Thursday we had to be up early. By which I mean 9am - we were booked into a horse-riding trek at 11:45, and they wanted us there half an hour early to get kitted out. We cycled about halfway there, but it turned out to be at the top of a long, steep, slope, so we walked our bikes up that. Our fitness levels were definitely increasing, but at the same time our bodies ached and throbbed. We signed in at the stables and were assigned horses - Julie got a black horse called Rosie and I was assigned Ben, who was massive. Julie had told them she had some experience, and so was lead off to prove she had l33t sk1llz, while I was helped up a set of steps and onto my beast. Julie passed with flying colours and joined the advanced team, who were going to get to trot some of the time, while I was placed at the front of the beginners, just behind our trek leader, Rachel. Ben turned out to either be attracted to Rachel's horse, or to enjoy bullying it, as he would occasionally take a few quick steps to catch up and nibble at her rear end.
The trek was only supposed to be an hour, but we were out for nearer 90 minutes - about 2/3 of the way round we bumped into the advanced team, who were going to go both there and back again in the time it took us to make it round. After managing to keep Ben reasonably under-control most of the way round he waited until Julie was right next to me before deciding to completely ignore my protestations, bend down, and grab a mouthful of grass. My shame was only lessened by Rosie deciding to do exactly the same thing at the same time. Clearly they took advantage of our mutual distraction to grab a bite to eat - clearly our mounts were bad influences on each other! The advanced team continued back, and we headed on, eventually reaching a gate into Center Parcs and making our way around the periphery until we arrived back at the stables again. The advanced team had beat us back by about ten minutes, so Ifell off dismounted, and went to compare aches and pains with Julie. My legs felt stretched in odd ways, and my spine was slightly wobbly from the rocking back and forth, but I felt generally in good shape, and the cycle home was fine.
Within the hour, however, my body was aching all over, and I decided that a nice hot bath was in order. Feeling somewhat refreshed, we headed off to the Lakeside Inn, which has some fantastic views, and very nice food - I had the Catbells pie, which was lovely, and Julie had a rather elaborate ham and cheese sandwich with soup. And then we walked to the village centre again, to send a few postcards.
(Note the HAND PULLED BEERS - none of your robot-bartending here!)
This morning (Friday) we were up even earlier - at 8am. We took the bikes back to the warehouse (my arse aching all the way, in a pair of places it's never ached before from the horse riding!), walked back to the apartment, and had it cleaned, tidied and everything packed in just half an hour, before heading off to drop off our keycards and grab a bus back to Penrith. We never actually agreed on a time to check out, we both just assumed that checking out even a minute before the 10am deadline would be crazy. Once again we were the only people at the bus stop - I wonder if anyone else staying this week hadn't arrived by car.
Overall we had a lovely time. There were some pre-school kids about, but they were all well behaved - the only unhappy ones we saw were either being told they had to go home, or had just fallen over. We had people staying in the next apartment, and when I heard them on the balcony they had quite loud voiced, but we never heard a thing through the walls, so the sound insulation must be very good. The only thing that kept us awake was the fridge turning on just as we were falling asleep, and the beds were very comfortable. We never felt like we ran out of things to do, and while we have lots of plans for other places to go next time, we'd happily go back at some point in the future.
And finally a couple of the village centre:
All of which sounds a tad disdainful, but actually it's a lovely place to visit for a few days. The compromise between natural beauty and artificial comforts produces occasional strangenesses (bundles of "freshly chopped wood" lie beside the path at one point, held in place by metal cables) that are more reminiscent of Disneyland than anything else, but it's undeniably very pretty, and watching parents feeding the ducks with their children, or wandering the (very nicely laid out) paths through the woods it's clear that any grouching is solely an immature rebellion against bourgeois comfort rather than because anything is actually wrong with the place.
Julie and I took the train down to from Edinburgh to Penrith, which is only about an hour and a half - not significantly longer than the journey to Glasgow, although it seems much further somehow (it is, after all, in a different country). The long curves set Julie's travel sickness off a bit, distracting her from the game of Icewind Dale that she had freshly installed onto her laptop (rescuing her save-game from her desktop before we left). While we didn't have Wi-Fi on the trip, I was happy to let her have the plug point, and I read my book (I'd just started the third book in the Pliocene Exile series at that point, and had bought the remaining volume, as well as Intervention, the vinculum between it and the Galactic Milieu trilogy, and Nation - the new Pratchett).
We arrived at Penrith station dead on time, fished out the bus timetable that Julie had printed out, and realised that, as Monday was a bank holiday, rather than a leisurely 45 minute wander to the bus station we had just 13 minutes to find our way to the bus station (and then a three hour gap in buses). We arrived just as the last person was getting onto the bus, and annoyed the driver by only having a tenner for our joint £1.70 in fare. Everyone else on the bus was also going to the resort - but we were the only guests, everyone else was working there. Clearly most people arrive by car!
We arrived safely though, and they checked us in, before telling us that they'd not only take our suitcases to our apartment, but as they didn't have much else to take over they'd give Julie and I a lift over too. This was great, as the resort is really quite large - and the driver was able to point out a few places along the way, like the bike-rental shop (a huge warehouse). I was a bit nervous about cycling - I'd agreed to rent a bike for the stay, but I hadn't ridden once since I was 11, except when I tried again once at aged 14 and fell off three times in a row before giving up! Various people had reassured me that you couldn't forget, but I wasn't at all confident.
We arrived at our home, at Lakeside Apartments, and dragged our bags up the stairs. We'd gone for a single-bedroom apartment rather than an actual villa, as those were all multi-bedroom which seemed like overkill. Instead we had a very comfortable two-room setup. One of the rooms is about 30 feet long by 15 feet wide, with a kitchen at one end, a sofa/TV in the middle, and a desk over by the windows at the other end, and a small door to a balcony overlooking the woods. Off to one side is the sleeping area, with the TV artfully set up on a rotating stand, so that it can be watched from the sofa or the bed. It's not at all cramped for two people, and the kitchen had been large enough for me to make breakfasts very happily (it's got nearly as much storage space as my kitchen at home and _more_ preparation space). The other room is the bathroom/shower/toilet, again of a decent size, being about the same as most hotel bathrooms I've stayed in - fantastic (if slightly variable) water pressure. It's even got a spare chair or two, in case one of us wanted to hog the sofa (or entertain visitors). The overall effect was quite luxurious.
We then headed down to the bike shop and picked up two bikes, along with locks and helmets, and rode round in circles for a few minutes to get the hang of it. Despite my worrying I picked it up very quickly - as did Julie, who revealed to me that _she_ hadn't ridden a bike since she was 11 either. We were both very grateful that there weren't many cars around - cars are forbidden in the grounds outside of a dropping-off slot on Monday and a picking-up slot on Friday - because we wobbled back and forth a lot until we got the hang of things. We stopped at the village centre on the way back, and bought some food/drink/tea/etc. at the shop, which was very well stocked and not nearly as unreasonably priced as I'd feared. We also investigated the restaurants and checked the opening times of the pool. Sorry, the "subtropical swimming paradise", of which I'll speak more later. We then cycled back to the apartment and unpacked our groceries.
We ordered Chinese take-away and then went for a walk around the lake, as it was going to take half an hour for the food to be ready. The arrangements of small homes in clusters with small clumps of forestry in-between brought to mind nothing so much as the design of villages in World of Warcraft or Fable - clearly artificial, but picturesque. We were struck by a fancy to come back at some point with two other couples, and rent one of the cottages.
We then picked up the food, which was...ok. Nothing special, but perfectly edible. Also, not vastly cheaper than it would have been to just eat out, so I recommend you do that instead. And then we went to try out the sub-tropical swimming paradise. Which isn't _just_ a pool - it's about 10 different pools, ranging from large Jacuzzis to a large bifurcated area with a wave machine in it, as well as areas joined by a slide (where water fell in waves from a platform above, an outdoor heated pool, and a loop around an island, half of which was indoor, half was outside. There's nothing quite like being in warm water with your head poking out into cold air.
(You can't take photos inside it, so here's a couple of photos of the outside of the pools, and of the outside of the "river rapids" flume, which is also outside)
Julie can't swim, so we spent some time in one of the quieter pools, working on the basics of "not drowning" and building some confidence, before going into the larger pool and sploshing about in the waves, and then exploring the rest of the complex. The air is kept at a constant 29.5 degrees, and it's lovely being able to wander about without getting cold.
Then we went to sleep, and slept fantastically - from 10:30 until 11:00 the next day. Best night's sleep we've had in a while! I’d seen adverts for Sealy mattresses before, but I’d never slept on one – it managed to be supportive, firm and comfortable at the same time.
Tuesday was much busier. I made a fry-up for breakfast (a tradition we’ve come to love) and then we decided to start off with a bike ride around the whole complex. We stopped off at the sports centre and booked a badminton game for the evening before heading on a long circuit around the whole village - which took us about an hour, and then we spent another hour in the pool, and then we played badminton. We then did a tour of the different restaurants before ending up at the French restaurant, where I had the Bouef Bourguignon with Potatoes Dauphinoise and Julie had the Chicken in a white wine sauce and Herb Mash, both of which actually were very good, and served from someone who may not have been actually French, but was from the continent and carried off the necessary dishevelled grumpiness masterfully. And then we fell over, exhausted and with aching muscles, and continued the French theme by watching the first half of Amelie in bed.
Today (Wednesday) my arms were aching enough, but we'd booked ourselves into a 2pm slot to go on the climbing wall, so after breakfast and (naked) pottering around the flat we headed off to it. Neither Julie nor I is great with heights, but I've been climbing at Alien Rock a couple of times, so I was more secure with it - I managed to make it all the way to the top three of the four times I went up (on different routes). Julie was more worried by the heights, and had never been climbing before - but she had a fantastic time, although it did take about half an hour for the shaking to stop. Then more lunch at the lakeside, before heading back to the to write up the holiday up to this point.
(Continued on the train back home - Friday at midday)
We were completely exhausted on Wednesday afternoon, after our long day on Tuesday and our climbing experience - clinging onto the rock really took it out of both of us, as it uses muscles that neither of us even knew we had! So we took Wednesday evening off, watching the rest of Amelie, and wandering into the village centre to pick up some food for us to make. Looking through the ingredients at the shop we realised that it was tailored more to parents making food for their families than it was to a couple wanting to make a meal for two.
nmg had warned us to bring a sharp knife and a decent pan, both of which the apartment had come with, but neither of us had thought to bring with herbs, spices, salt, etc. - which meant that we'd have had to buy some and either take them home after the end of the holiday, or throw them away when we left. So in the end we went to Bella Italia, and had some nice pasta - which was nicer than the takeout, if not up to the same level as the French food of Tuesday night. We flopped into bed and collapsed for an early night.Thursday we had to be up early. By which I mean 9am - we were booked into a horse-riding trek at 11:45, and they wanted us there half an hour early to get kitted out. We cycled about halfway there, but it turned out to be at the top of a long, steep, slope, so we walked our bikes up that. Our fitness levels were definitely increasing, but at the same time our bodies ached and throbbed. We signed in at the stables and were assigned horses - Julie got a black horse called Rosie and I was assigned Ben, who was massive. Julie had told them she had some experience, and so was lead off to prove she had l33t sk1llz, while I was helped up a set of steps and onto my beast. Julie passed with flying colours and joined the advanced team, who were going to get to trot some of the time, while I was placed at the front of the beginners, just behind our trek leader, Rachel. Ben turned out to either be attracted to Rachel's horse, or to enjoy bullying it, as he would occasionally take a few quick steps to catch up and nibble at her rear end.
The trek was only supposed to be an hour, but we were out for nearer 90 minutes - about 2/3 of the way round we bumped into the advanced team, who were going to go both there and back again in the time it took us to make it round. After managing to keep Ben reasonably under-control most of the way round he waited until Julie was right next to me before deciding to completely ignore my protestations, bend down, and grab a mouthful of grass. My shame was only lessened by Rosie deciding to do exactly the same thing at the same time. Clearly they took advantage of our mutual distraction to grab a bite to eat - clearly our mounts were bad influences on each other! The advanced team continued back, and we headed on, eventually reaching a gate into Center Parcs and making our way around the periphery until we arrived back at the stables again. The advanced team had beat us back by about ten minutes, so I
Within the hour, however, my body was aching all over, and I decided that a nice hot bath was in order. Feeling somewhat refreshed, we headed off to the Lakeside Inn, which has some fantastic views, and very nice food - I had the Catbells pie, which was lovely, and Julie had a rather elaborate ham and cheese sandwich with soup. And then we walked to the village centre again, to send a few postcards.
(Note the HAND PULLED BEERS - none of your robot-bartending here!)
This morning (Friday) we were up even earlier - at 8am. We took the bikes back to the warehouse (my arse aching all the way, in a pair of places it's never ached before from the horse riding!), walked back to the apartment, and had it cleaned, tidied and everything packed in just half an hour, before heading off to drop off our keycards and grab a bus back to Penrith. We never actually agreed on a time to check out, we both just assumed that checking out even a minute before the 10am deadline would be crazy. Once again we were the only people at the bus stop - I wonder if anyone else staying this week hadn't arrived by car.
Overall we had a lovely time. There were some pre-school kids about, but they were all well behaved - the only unhappy ones we saw were either being told they had to go home, or had just fallen over. We had people staying in the next apartment, and when I heard them on the balcony they had quite loud voiced, but we never heard a thing through the walls, so the sound insulation must be very good. The only thing that kept us awake was the fridge turning on just as we were falling asleep, and the beds were very comfortable. We never felt like we ran out of things to do, and while we have lots of plans for other places to go next time, we'd happily go back at some point in the future.
And finally a couple of the village centre:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 09:40 pm (UTC)-jealous-
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Date: 2008-09-21 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 08:24 am (UTC)(Distinct lack of elves though)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 07:55 am (UTC)I hope you get a cut from Center Parcs marketing department...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 05:11 pm (UTC)