holiday suggestions for family of 5 in school holidays please

[beth54]

We are stuck for inspiration of where to go with 3 DC aged 8, 5 and 2. We would like to go abroad in August school holidays and have a maximum budget of £2500. I would be very grateful to hear what other families with 3 children do so I can get some ideas! Thanks in advance.

I love Marmaris, Dont go to Elenite, Bulgaria.

thanks for the suggestion, fifi, I will look at marmaris. I was wondering about turkey. Is it very hot in august? Dare I ask why not Bulgaria?!

I went in the middle of July and it was unbelievably hot. I loved it. The shoppings great and the food was lovely. The turks are a bit false but make you feel really welcom. My MIL has been 12 years in a row. I went to Elenite last July and it was awful. 22 of us went and we all got food poisoning at some point. We were on a 5* all inclusive resort. The resort was lovely but the food and staff were horrible and i mean RAW meat. We had no power for 3 days and no back up. Its full of Russians and Germans who have been going for years. We went to sunny beach and i got my purse stolen off the gypsie fruit sellers. I wouldnt go there either My cousin went on an all inc last year to another part of Turkey and he was Turkey Phobic. He loved it and has booked again. I will find out the name of the complex and let you know.

That really sounds like a holiday from hell in Bulgaria! Nothing worse than food poisoning on holiday! Turkey sounds lovely though, thanks very much for your help.

Ive never been but my mam swears by salou for the kids, If you shop around you could try for a hotel in the port aventura theme park. Thats where i fancy for my next one.

Good Luck

We are off to Turkey in August with our 3 dc. Staying all inc in Hisaronu.

What board basis?

What kind of things are important to you re holidays?

I hated Salou btw.

Did the kids like Salou

Tbh fifi it's one of the worst places I have been. Blackpool in the sun about sums it up. Tacky shops and bars in every direction.

The kids didn't like it but maybe that's because I was so unhappy.

I guess it really depends on what you like from a holiday.

We have 3 dcs and have been to the first choice holiday villages in Majorca and Spain both nice and vg for kids all ages.

I know people who have been to the ones in turkey and Egypt and they liked them too.

Turkey is very hot in August but we don't mind as we love it there, my husband is Turkis so we go a lot. Not Marmaris though, it is very big and commercialised there, we prefer the Bodrum Peninsula.

Have you thought about staying in a mobile home in France/Spain/Italy? We have been doing this for years (we too are a family of 5). We prefer self catering so that we can eat what and when we want and keep costs down if need be.

Eurocamp/Keycamp/Canvas are the big operators with loads of smaller ones around as well.

One tip - our DCs are now in/entering the teenage years so we always now go for 3 bedrooms. When DCs were smaller we fitted into two bedroom accomodation quite easily.

GnomedePlume, can you recommend any sites?
The quieter the better!

We are off to Salou in August - a week at the Hotel Portaventura with a family room. We paid £2800 when I booked last May but I looked again yesterday and the same holiday is now coming up at £3800 with Thomson.

My mam always stayed on the theme park when she went to Salou and she says the evening shows are really good. She went 4 times but it was a few year ago. Not sure about the rest of Salou.

I second the mobile home suggestion. If you go half-way through August it will be cheaper.

goldenticket - last year we stayed in Campsite Domaine du Verdon. This is in inland Provence. It's a bit of journey to get to as the last bit is windy roads. It was a pleasant site, quite quiet within walking distance of Castellane. There was a river along the edge of the site which the DCs really enjoyed playing in (actually we all did). Gorge du Verdon is amazing.

Almost all inland campsites will be pretty quiet. Our experience is that there might be a disco or some such (often only a couple of times a week) but these will normally shut down at the latest at midnight. Most campsites are arranged so that all the facilities such as bar, pool, shop etc are all together. The pitches are then mostly away from these.

Campsites are aimed at families so on the whole they will tend to be fairly restrained. It is only on the coast that they can be a bit 'kiss me quick'.

This year we are booked into a small site based in a vineyard in Languedoc.

We have been staying in campsites for more than 15 years. We normally stay away from the seaside as I hate sand and salt water (and I do the booking!).

A lot of people like the Vendee (atlantic coast). Personally I found it too flat. We have stayed a number of times in the Languedoc (great for castles).

What type of thing do you want? How far are you prepared to drive? Sea or inland? Baked or green? France is a huge place, we have stayed in most regions so it just depends on what tickles your fancy!

Gnome, that's really helpful thank you. I've only been to Brittany and that was staying in cottages but now that my youngest is 8 and a competent swimmer, I feel more confident about staying on a big site IYKWIM. I'm certainly not bothered about being inland although access to a lake and watersports would be great. I love castles (and the kids are getting to love them ) so somewhere in the middle of a glut of those would be perfect. Probably opt for somewhere in the middle of green and baked - the weather in Brittany was far too similar to the UK for all the effort of getting there but am not bothered about it being true Med weather. It's more being in a beautiful location (cycling would be good) with a campsite that wasn't completely rammed but had some facilities/activities (i.e. I like the sound of a disco but not every night). In fact, the site you described sounded great - off to google!

Thanks so much for the responses. I also really like the sound of the campsite you mentioned in Provence, GnomeDePlume and I shall be off to google it too. May I ask how you travelled there and how you found it? I think we would look to drive it over two days but I would worry that the traffic would be a nightmare and that it would be an exhausting trip. Have you found this to be the case or is it quite doable?

Thanks again for all the helpful advice.

goldenticket - how about the Dordogne? The scenery is great. There is canoeing in the area. Off the top of my head worth visiting are Sarlat-la-Caneda and Domme (plus an awful lot more). There are quite a few good quality campsites in the area. Most are not huge sites but have a good range of facilities. It's about an 8 hour drive (without stops) from the tunnel. We live in the midlands so would make a two day journey out of it probably stopping around Orleans.

The Dordogne is popular with the British and rightly so. Top tip for getting into the more popular places is to go for the morning aiming to arrive at opening up time. Head for the payable parking and there shouldnt be a problem to get in!

beth54 the domaine du verdon site is in beautiful scenery and the river is great though a couple of times a week the sluices are opened further up which means the river gets quick and is then used for rafting. Castellane is a 1.5km walk from the site and was scenic with a few nice restaurants. The pool is quite modest - a lot of people bathed in the river which was sparkly clear. The one down side was that to get anywhere away from the site other than Castellane meant a windy journey.

We find driving in France a lot less tiring than in the UK, the roads do tend to be quieter. Last year we took 2 days to drive down to Provence but did the return journey in one long day.

Happy holidays!