Our Adventures // Our Week in Bluestone – Summer 2018

We are long time lovers of Bluestone National Park for the perfect West Wales family holiday, and as some of you will know we visit at least once a year, usually in January. We originally decided to start going every January when we were just a couple without a little person in tow, and the highly exciting reason we went in January was…to do our tax return in peace! Yep, thats how we roll. Obviously we now have Elian so our reason for going has changed hugely. Instead of the peaceful quiet time we spent doing end of year business admin, we spend our 5 days between the awesome Blue Lagoon, the very loud but fun indoor adventure park and just chilling in our lodge watching movies. The park is pretty quiet in January but it’s also pretty cold so we aren’t able to make the most of the lovely outdoor setting the park offers, but as this year showed we still really enjoy our time there, its the perfect winter staycation!

When Bluestone got in touch and invited us for a Bluestone Blogger Break this month we jumped at the chance, super excited to have a little West Wales family holiday away before the chaos of wedding season starts and to get to experience the park when it is lovely and sunny.

So for those of you who have never been to Bluestone, or never heard of it, here’s a general overview of what it looks like and what there is to offer.

The park is made up of lots and lots of different wooden lodges, ranging from small 2 bed bungalows to large 4 bed houses. They are all located on different roads around a central village, a bit like a small village estate in the countryside. The village houses the shop, the pub, a restaurant, a cafe, a grill house, a few other shops, the booking office, an outdoor park and a few cottages. On site there is also a lake, many walks, the amazing Blue Lagoon swimming pool, giant indoor play centre, outdoor activities such as archery, highwire course and climbing wall, the village theatre where you can book to see kids shows and Camp Smokey (which we have yet to visit!).

Accept for on arrival and the morning you leave, the site is mostly car free (disabled badge holders are an exception, and the odd maintenance vehicle and the bus) so most people walk, take golf buggies (which you can hire) or cycle, its really lovely and very safe for children. 

The cabins are lovely and homely (except for slightly uncomfortable sofas! sorry!) and are stocked with everything you might need during your stay. A full equipped kitchen, bathroom items (you’ll need to bring your own toiletries though), TV, DVD player, high chair, travel cot, baby gates and cleaning items. I really could happily live in one of the cabins long term…in fact me and Jon have joked numerous times about just moving there for a few months at a time, if only we could afford it!

Plus with the cafe, pub, restaurant, chip shop, pizza delivery and corner shop on site you don’t even need to leave the site if you don’t want to. As West Wales is only an hour from our home we usually don’t leave the park at all when we are there as we can visit the places locally whenever we want, so we love that we can just enjoy the park and relax for the full 5 days we are there. 

This has been out favourite trip so far to Bluestone as Elian was old enough to really enjoy the holiday. Every morning we would lazily get up, have breakfast with the doors open, then head off to walk to the Blue Lagoon for an hour or 2 in the pool. Elian is such a water baby these days, so loved all the time we spent swimming, every day!!! He is happy to kick himself along simply floating on his pool noodle now, so he enjoyed the lazy river and then being able to play in the toddler section which is lovely and warm. We would then return to our cabin (on the bus!) where he would take a lovely 1-2 hour nap! So tired after all the fun in the pool.

Lunch was usually something simple like sandwiches or salad, then we would play outside, go to the park or for a walk around the lake, take some photos, go for ice-cream in the coffee shop or a cool drink in the pub. And one night we had the pleasure of meeting fellow blogging mama Kaye from Hello Archie and her lovely family. Rubbish blogger that I am I didn’t even get a picture of us together, but it was lovely to finally meet her in real life after talking to her so often on line. The evening would end with dinner outside on our picnic table and Elian collapsing into bed totally knackered but very happy after a busy day.

Bluestone is such a lovely place for a perfect family staycation, lovely and relaxing, yet still lots for kids to do and too keep them entertained. We got to spend some proper quality time together and just really enjoy each others company. Elian loved all the freedom he was able to have, lots of running around (like pretty much everywhere all the time!) and the fact that we spent so much of our time there outdoors, either just playing outside the cabin, in the playground, walking too and from the pool or village, or taking a stroll around the lake or in the woodland. 

We cannot wait to return again, we already have next January booked and it should be extra fun as we are taking our friends, the Coopers, with us too. It will be their first time to visit Bluestone, so we can’t wait to show them all it has to offer. Their little girl, Alanis, is the same age as Elian and you may have seen her over on our vlog occasionally. 

Thank you so much Bluestone for another amazing family holiday, we will see you soon!!

*Our stay was covered by Bluestone, in return for an honest review, and lots of cute pictures! If you are a holiday venue looking for bloggers to work with please get in touch*

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