Our First Family Holiday: Bluestone Wales – part 2

Last month Ian, the boys and I headed off to Bluestone National Park Resort in Pembrokeshire, Wales for our first family holiday*. It was my first holiday in over 3 years and it was the first holiday the boys had ever been on. Last week I posted about Bluestone and our amazing lodge and this week I’m telling you about the things we got up to during our stay.

MONDAY

We arrived on a Monday and having factored in several pit stops along the way, it was well after 5pm by the time we reached Bluestone. We knew this would be the case so all we had planned for that evening was to unpack and chill out.

The restaurants are closed on Mondays and I was way too tired to cook, so we ordered food from the resort’s takeaway service, while the boys had cheese on toast at N’s request. Both Ian and I ordered the homemade vegetable balti which came with rice, and we also got some naan bread and poppadoms. It came to just over £20 which is about what we’d pay for a takeaway at home and was delivered around 30 minutes later. Then we just relaxed and watched TV for the rest of the evening before catching an early night, ready for the next day.

TUESDAY

We had a slow and easy start to the day. I let Ian have a well-earned lie-in along with Little N, whilst Baby J had me up and at ‘em early on as usual! We headed downstairs to prepare a lovely breakfast for everyone and enjoyed the beautiful views from our lodge.

A photo posted by Sian (@quitefranklyshesaid) on Jun 30, 2015 at 12:50am PDT

Once Ian and Little N were up and ready we went for an little wander down into the village. We stopped by the little play area which N was delighted to have spotted. “PAAAARK MUMMY! PARRRRRK!” I think Ian had the most fun on the big swing.

We got the boys some lunch and then it was time for me to go to the spa, yippee! I had booked a Celtic Spa Experience at the Well Spa, which is an award-winning spa in the heart of village. The two-hour Celtic Spa Experience is a series of therapeutic rooms designed to take your body on a wet to dry, warm to cold temperature journey.

It has a salt therapy room, two saunas, two steam rooms and an ice room. It also included use of the hydrotherapy pool outside. Most importantly, I had two hours to myself. TWO WHOLE UNINTERRUPTED HOURS! It was amazing and I felt thoroughly relaxed and revitalised by the end of it. Ian also had a Celtic Spa Experience while I went back to our lodge to put Baby J down for a nap.

That evening we booked The Oak Tree for dinner. The Oak Tree is one of the resort’s restaurants and is situated in the village overlooking the great oak tree. The restaurant offers a fusion of local Welsh produce with an Italian twist. The boys shared a pizza, and by share I mean N refused to eat it knowing he had ice-cream coming and J dropped most of his on the floor.

For starters I ordered Pumpkin tortellini, salt baked beetroots, Pant-Ys-Gawn goats curd with a hazelnut salad [minus the hazelnuts because of my allergy] while Ian had locally landed flaked salt cod, roast pepper, olives & Pecorino cheese. For main I had St Brides Bay brown crab risotto and pan fried cod served with a rich tomato puree and greens and Ian had Braised Welsh lamb, pea, mushroom & pancetta fricassee with potato gnocchi. It was all delicious, though I couldn’t finish my main as the portion was HUGE! I also had a cheeky glass of fizz while Ian sampled some local Welsh lager, Tomos Watkin's Magic Lagyr.

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday we headed to the Blue Lagoon Water Park. Entry to the Blue Lagoon is included with any break booked at Bluestone and it is awesome! The changing area was spacious and clean, and there were plenty of lockers. We picked a family changing room so that Ian could hold J while I got changed and vice versa. Considering how big Bluestone is the pool was not too busy at all which was great. I didn’t take my camera in with me as I no doubt would have ruined it, but these photos from the Bluestone website give you an idea of what it looks like.

The main pool looks like an indoor beach as it slopes down into the water and changes from a sandy colour to blue. The main pool has a wicked wave machine – Ian stayed in the depths of the water jumping waves with Little N whilst I sat at the edge of the water with Baby J, and it was literally like being on a beach with waves lapping our toes!

The pool also has a lazy river that takes you from the main pool to outside, where there is a warm, bubbly outside pool, and back in again. There are water flumes too which whizz you outside before returning you with a splash; Ian really enjoyed these! For the children there was a pirates’ shipwreck where they could pull levers to fill buckets and tip out and lots of other water fun, and for very little ones there was a baby’s pool.

There were lots of deckchairs lined out along the outer edge of the pool which added to the beachy feel, along with the glass ceiling allowing in the sunlight and the whole area feeling lovely and warm. We ended up not getting lunch at The Fish Shack after all, though I was very tempted as it smelled really good!

That evening we had a BBQ back at our lodge as we had decided when we were planning our stay. We had brought a disposable BBQ with us, but you can buy them at the village store if you are unprepared. One thing you must not forget if you want to BBQ at Bluestone, is tongs! I had already found out in advance that we would need them (I know it’s a random thing to have thought of!) but still managed to forget.

Then we simply relaxed for the rest of the evening and watched the sun set.

THURSDAY

On Thursday we went to the Adventure Centre to check out the mini golf and let the boys play in the Circus Zone, which is a soft play area. N was in his element here, particularly when he discovered the giant Lego!

We then ventured off the resort and drove into Tenby to see what the town had to offer, and find somewhere nice for lunch. Being at the seaside it HAD to be fish and chips and we had the biggest portions ever! The beaches at Tenby are stunning. Unfortunately, Thursday was the one day that we had rain so we didn’t get to play on the beach, but the views were stunning.

For dinner that evening we were back on the Bluestone resort and had booked a table at Farmhouse Grill. Farmhouse Grill offers mostly fish and meat on the menu made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients. We were still stuffed from our enormous portion of fish and chips earlier in the day so we skipped starters and went straight to mains. I had lobster and Ian had sole, which were both delicious and very filling.

FRIDAY

Time to go home! We packed our bags and tidied up our lodge, loaded the car and checked out by simply dropping our lodge key into the key box at the car park gate. Then immediately drove round to the Blue Lagoon for some more water fun, as you can still use the facilities until 3pm on the day of check-out! We didn’t stay as long as that though, as we knew we had a long drive ahead but it was nice to have a bit of fun before having to leave.

We had such a fantastic time at Bluestone, and despite our week being packed with fun there was still plenty of things that we didn’t have time to check out such as Camp Smokey, the Steep Ravine and the lake. We want to come back again soon, so we will plan those for our next stay!

I’ll leave you with a few more photos from our visit and if you like the sound of Bluestone Wales do take a look at their website here – I really recommend it!