Bluestone National Park Holiday in Wales: Day One
Arriving in Pembrokeshire on Monday afternoon was a wonderful experience. I’d say that 99% of my visits to Wales have been in the rain, so to arrive in the blazing sunshine, to the beautiful surroundings of South Wales was a real treat.
This week, Hubs, L, C and I are guests of Bluestone National Park near Narberth and over the next few days I’ll be posting about what we’re up to, before giving a final overall review at the end of our time here. One thing I can say for sure though is so far so very good.
We arrived at Narberth train station at 3.20pm on Monday. On calling the taxi company number that Bluestone had given us I was informed that no cars were available as they were all on the school run. Eek! After 5 and 1/2 hours of travelling with a 7 year old and a 19 month old, on 3 trains we were feeling a bit tired, and ready to flop at our home for the next few days.
Not one to give in to panic easily, we let C out of her pushchair, gave L her book and settled in to wait.
In no time at all a mahoosive taxi appeared, an 8 seater car, so plenty of space for us 5, our buggy and our 2 big suitcases. Phew!
The taxi driver, Kevin, was so lovely, chatting away to us about Wales, Pembrokeshire and Bluestone in particular. He hung around while we checked in and offered to drive us through the resort to our lodge. Excellent customer service from “TP & Narberth taxis” if you’re ever in the area and need a cab!
We got settled in to our lodge, which is just incredible – spacious, clean, comfortable and pleasing on the eye. What more can you ask for in a holiday home?!?
After buying a few supplies, Hubs rustled us up a lovely spaghetti bolognese which we enjoyed al fresco.
After a wonderful night’s sleep we woke up refreshed and ready for our first real day of our holiday. We started off with the Blue Lagoon – Bluestone’s (mostly) indoor water park, where Hubs and L had lots of fun zooming down the water slides, while C and I floated around the lazy river.
After lunch Hubs and L chilled outside our lodge, whilst I caught up on social media and some blog post reading after Britmums Live at the weekend. Seeing as C was having a good long nap, Hubs and L decided to head off on a cycle ride with the bikes we’ve hired here.
Once C woke up all of us went along to the indoor adventure centre for L to do some climbing and for C to do some playing.
L is a massive tree climber so she had a ball scampering up the climbing wall. However what we hadn’t thought through was that she’s used to climbing back down, so really struggled with the letting herself lean back and “fall” with the harness and pulley bringing her down safely.
C discovered her first ball pool and was not disappointed.
Finally the whole family clambered onto the bouncy castle – which we had to ourselves – and jumped, rolled, ran and laughed. I’m a huge fan of bouncy castles but they never let adults on usually, so I had massive amounts of fun jumping up and down (embarrassing video to come at some point).
To round off a great first full day at Bluestone, the lovely Alison, from Not another mummy blog, who is here on holiday with her family at the moment too, came to babysit our girls so that Hubs and I could go out for dinner, just the two of us.
We had hoped to go to Carreg Las, the poshest restaurant at Bluestone, but it’s only open Wednesday – Saturday, so we ended up going to Farmhouse Grill instead. The food was delicious, with local ingredients, a great variety of dishes and reasonable prices. BUT it wasn’t the most romantic of places – the set-up is a bit like a Harvester, with a salad bar – so that was a tiny bit disappointing. We’ll have to see how Alison and her husband rate Carreg Las when they go there tonight while I babysit for their daughter.
All in all we’re having the best time at Bluestone, although this blog post comes a bit later than I had hoped as the wifi has been a bit inconsistent….Tune in tomorrow (hopefully) to see what we get up to on Day Two at Bluestone National Park…
Disclosure: our family was gifted a 5 day holiday to Bluestone National Park in exchange for one blog post about it. We’ve found it to be such an amazing place that I chose to blog about it each day, with our experiences. As ever this is totally honest and all words and opinions are my/our own.
I looks like you’re having a wonderful time – what a fab place and great that you got to have a meal together! Looking forward to reading more about your time here x
We had such a great time, and getting to have a meal out just the two of us was just fab 🙂 x