7264/19784
Glad that Sunak wants to fix the economy. Hopefully he also has time to track down whoever it was that broke it.
Center Parcs!
When writing her journal tonight (chip off the old block) my daughter asked how to spell it. I had to tell her that wasn’t how you spelled either of those words. It’s American crossed with French and a quick google tells me that it was created by a Dutch man, but that that’s not how you spell either word in Dutch.
To be fair, that’s the least of your worries with this place. I am living in fear that an important person will have a funeral and I will be imprisoned in my chalet, though in some ways that would be better than being free to roam Center Parcs. At least on a Monday where you have an influx of new visitors (including us) and also people who are leaving can hang around. Even getting to use the toilet after the long trip was an excruciating wait and the facilities seemed much too slight for the number of people here.
Like everyone else we decided to go to the pool whilst we waited to be let into our cabin. If Satan is watching (and why wouldn’t be be) the changing rooms at Center Parcs on a Monday afternoon would be a perfect new room for Hell. Wet floors, full lockers (probably because like us most people had too much stuff with them having brought in essentials from the car), all the booths seemed to be full and the only lockers we could locate weren’t functioning well. Last time we’d been at Center Parcs it was during Covid and you had to book your pool sessions and we wondered if it was always this Hellish in normal times. It did seem to be an especially small changing room and there were far too few showers, but inside the actual pool it didn’t seem that busy at all. We had a lot of fun, before returning to the dirty floored changing room to try and find somewhere to get dry and change.
The cost for four nights at this place, plus a couple of activities a day and three restaurant bookings had exceeded £2000. Who were all these people who could afford this during these troubling times? And why weren’t they spending that money on an amazing proper holiday for a fortnight, somewhere where it wasn’t pissing down with rain?
We got into our cabin, where one bedroom door doesn’t shut because one of the beds is in the way and then ate a disappointing evening meal at boil in the bag restaurant Cafe Rouge and I wondered what the Hell we were doing here and what these people had done with our money. Maybe bought a dictionary.
But the kids were already having a great time and I am sure things will settle down. There’s three hours tomorrow when the kids are going to Wizard school and Catie is going to a spa, where I will get time to myself, though I will probably waste a good chunk of it writing this blog that you are reading now, knowing me.
On the plus side there are more water slides at this one than the other one we went to and there’s some in between being for toddlers or thrill seekers (though they still made me feel a bit scared) , so it might be fun. Our plan is to spend most of our time in the pool. If we never leave then we don’t have to go through the purgatory of the changing room.
