Hello Steemit!

For this week's Fit for Life article I wanted to take you back a bit in history to a holiday that Amy and I had a few years ago. The reason I wanted to do this is because it was a holiday to a place that is very special to me. The place I am going to take you today is Centre Parcs. The easiest way to describe Centre Parcs is that it is an active holiday destination, particularly targeted at families.

Some of the earliest holidays I went on as a child were to Centre Parcs. There are five different Parcs in the UK, located in Nottingham Forest, Longleat Forest, Elvedon Forest, Whinfell Forest and Woburn Forest. As a child I spent many a holiday and have many lovely memories of going to the Elvedon Forest Centre Parcs and Amy, my fiancé, had similar experiences at Longleat Forest. Because of these fond childhood memories, there's a lot of nostalgia for the both of us when it comes to this place so we both wanted to go there together.

Centre Parcs has activities for everyone, from swimming to Badminton to crazy golf to water sports on the lake. Today I'll show you just some of the activities that we did when we holidayed there and show off that you can keep fit and active, even on holiday! Going on holiday doesn't just have to be sitting on a sun lounger doing nothing and eating too much food.

Swimming is a central activity at Centre Parcs - I took my waterproof camera. More later!

Centre Parcs - An activity holiday for all ages

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When we arrived at Centre Parcs it had probably been 10 years since either of us had visited. We felt like children again and were very excited to be getting to visit the scene of or favourite childhood holidays, and getting to be really active at the same time. The holiday park is gated and fenced off so that only guests are able to access the facilities, but the area is huge. There are hundreds and hundreds of chalets spread across the area, all nestled in their own private area of the wood.

Arriving in the car near the front of our chalet (it's set back into the woods near this telephone box)

Most of the accommodation are private chalets set in the woodland - here's ours!

The living area

Kitchen and dining area

Bedroom

View from the living room out at the private patio area in the woods

Guests can only arrive on certain days of the week. Usually a Friday and a Monday. On those days, the Parc opens up the roads to cars so that guests can drive their belongings to their chalet - but at all other times there are no vehicles allowed inside the Parc. This makes it safe for children to play, for people to cycle around and of course it keeps the area quiet and serene like the woodland that it is.

This is one of the many examples of pathways that wind through the woods so that you can walk or cycle around the area and get to all of the different places and activities. After getting settled into our chalet, we wanted to get straight out and start having fun! The chalet was exactly as I remember it as a child - the nostalgia was already beginning!

At the heart of all Centre Parcs is the subtropical swimming paradise. Set inside a huge glass dome, you'll find restaurants, shops, indoor streams and tropical plants. As a child I used to just run around this area, excited by the novelty of feeling like you're in a jungle, but inside! There's no where else I've been that's quite like it and it has its own particular smells and sounds that just reminded me of childhoods of happy holidays here.

This was an amazing map of the changing rooms of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise. At first glance it looks like a nice, colourful map of the changing area and the lockers for your belongings, but when I looked closer I realised it was also designed for people who were blind or sight impaired. Each of the different parts of the map had different textures, with a key on the right hand side with braille so that you could read the map by touch - very clever!

Then it was finally time to get down to some serious swimming. I had my waterproof camera so took some shots but didn't really get to show you everything that the pool at Centre Parcs has. There's chutes and slides and rapids and hot pools and a giant wave pool. We had so much fun riding down the outdoor rapids, Amy and I racing each other to try and get down first.

At the start of the rapids

Amy going for the head first swan dive

Going down in tandem

Trying some handstands

Getting down to some other activities

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Because Centre Parcs is really big, and there's no cars allowed, most people cycle everywhere. There's loads of these massive bike parking areas and in the summer it can be hard to find a space to lock your bike! The great thing is that it keeps you active even as you move between the activities.

Heading to the Plaza

The plaza is where much of the other activities are located at Centre Parcs, that aren't swimming or restaurants. The plaza has everything from badmington courts, table tennis and regular tennis, to pottery painting, snooker and a gym. There's also loads of organised activities too such as roller skating and rock climbing, though those are more for the kids. We had booked some pottery painting so we headed on over!

Not looking sure about the whole pottery painting thing

Loving the whole pottering painting thing

Our clay tiles that we had painted before they were fired in the kiln

Our finished tiles once they'd been fired in the kiln - mine were the J.R.R. Tolkien themed ones!

Next activity on the list was mini/crazy golf. Unfortunately for Amy I absolutely totally won! But it was great fun while playing. I really enjoyed this because it didn't feel like you were doing much exercise but by the time we had finished we'd actually walked quite far and been on our feet for a couple of hours, while having fun!

Finally we headed for the lake. There were loads of fish swimming around near the bridge over one end of the lake, where I assume they get fed often by visitors. We were on our way to hire a pedalo so we could enjoy the sun out on the water, while exercising too!

More fish!

Out on the pedalo in the sun

It's harder than I'm making it look!

Amy enjoying the sun out on the water

So that's it Steemit friends! I really hope you enjoyed following a long with an old favourite place of mine. You can go on holiday in perfect seclusion, exercise, have fun and never leave the UK. There's also Centre Parcs in mainland Europe but I've never been! Writing this post has brought back a lot of beautiful childhood memories for me about this place. I hope that some of you are inspired to go and visit if you have small children because they'd absolutely love it and will remember it for years to come - while helping them stay fit and healthy (not on the video games)!

Yours in health,
Coach Ben

Wild squirell tax!