Heading to paradise comes in many different forms. For us, an easy water-based holiday is all we need right now. With the kids being young, we find that our holidays are based around easy travel, doing something they will love and just spending time together. As much as I would love to be holidaying in villas in Greece or Italy, maybe I am just not brave enough to be travelling (well flying) with the kids yet. So for us, we base ourselves in this beautiful country and find we have not even touched the surface of the beautiful places to go here. In fact, each year I hope to explore a bit more and find new coastlines but there is always that wonderful comfort of heading somewhere you are already familiar with. No doubt Cornwall and Norfolk will once again feature this summer.
In the winter months we are pretty stuck here in Lincolnshire. No hills for climbing, no severe snowy weather, nothing that you could make a holiday out of, but as you head out into Robin Hood country we are lucky enough to have a little bit of paradise in the form of
Center Parcs. We go each year as a big family holiday and it is always in January. It is freezing cold but due to the set up of the park their tropical swimming pool is in the centre and very much the centre of our holiday.
It's warm, there's water, plenty of room, food and drink and it wouldn't matter what the weather was; you are in a beautiful bubble that nothing can penetrate!
For us, obviously we have a nostalgic value attached to it; my parents took us there a lot when we were younger with our grandparents, and now they are the grandparents and so the cycle continues. For us it really is a brilliant five days.
The park has loads to offer for families which I am not going to talk about too much as we have our own little things we like to do, but every single day can be filled with activities for all.
Unfortunately, we do not exploit these activities like we should as we simply love being poolside. That is what our kids love the most. They play for hours, and with all the family there they can swap and change playmates all the time!
With spending so much time in the water we find that the kids get exhausted so our days our filled with points of rest and lots of food to keep us going. Life is good when we are there though and you really can just enjoy being away and lazing in a swimming costume all day!
This year the kids were asked to try out some amazing new swimwear from
SUNUVA who specialise in making UV protection swimwear for children to help protect them more than ordinary swimsuits might. Their products are made with high quality UPF 50+ fabric which blocks out more than 97% of the suns harmful rays. OK, OK this wasn't going to be an issue on our indoor holiday in the middle of January but still, finding good quality swimwear is vitally important for us as we know the kind of holidaying we do and how much time is spent in water and sunshine.
For our kids, the fits, styles and colours were a huge success. They both loved their costumes and their coverups which came in handy for when they were ready to rest.
As you can see, the children are real water babies and their clothing kept them swimming and happy all week. I know these will be great to continue using in their weekly swimming lessons and into the summer when we get some warm weather.
If we weren't by the pool we were cycling, playing and just enjoying the outdoors whilst being wrapped up warm. Center Parcs gives us a perfect little retreat and helps us fly through January and miss most of the blues!!
Emily
*Post in collaboration with SUNUVA
