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Holidays

Use our Travel forum for recommendations on everything from day trips to the best family-friendly holiday destinations.

Sociable child-friendly self-catering in the mountains?

5 replies

Lovage · 13/08/2014 16:43

We'd love to go to the mountains next year - somewhere not too hot in August, so not Spain or Italy, but Germany, Austria, Switzerland (too expensive?), France, somewhere like that.

The set-up that works best for us is self-catering sharing a garden and swimming pool with other families. That way the kids make friends naturally and go off and play with them, leaving us free to laze around... We also need two toilets (don't ask) although just a downstairs bog type thing is fine.

But my extensive searching on ownersdirect, gites de France and chez nous is not turning up much of this kind of thing. I can find a few apartments in the same chalet, but they don't seem to have gardens that would facilitate kids playing together. We don't want actual kids clubs (although I suppose that's a possibility, if it wasn't too expensive and DS1 could be persuaded) just a set up that makes it easy for kids who don't already know one another to play together.

Does anyone know anywhere like this? I was wondering about self-catering apartments within a hotel or chalets on a campsite, but the trouble is that those mostly only have one toilet per unit, which really doesn't work well for us. But ideally it would be a small complex of self-catering villas or apartments.

Any suggestions gratefully received. Thank you!

OP posts:
LIZS · 13/08/2014 17:39

www.pierreetvacances.com/gb-en
www.interhome.co.uk/
or google some of the resorts tourist offices.

Lovage · 14/08/2014 21:59

Thanks LIZS. Being able to search 'in the mountains' for the Pierre et Vacances one is really useful!

I'm not sure whether such big complexes as those would facilitate the kids playing with strangers in the way that smaller ones do. I don't know, maybe they would but my previous experience is that lots of other kids works fine for DS2 who is naturally sociable and makes friends everywhere he goes, but really don't work for DS1 who is an introvert and gets overwhelmed by all the people he doesn't know - a smaller number seems to be much less scary to him.

I suppose on the upside DS1, being an introvert, doesn't need the other kids to keep him entertained in the way that DS2 does. He'll be happy reading and drawing for hours on end.

I'd be interested to hear from other people with kids with different personalities about how that affects the ways they make friends on holiday. DS2 was in floods of tears this year at having to leave the best friend he'd made, poor mite.

OP posts:
raspberryriot · 15/08/2014 09:21

We have just come back from a fantastic week's holiday staying in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Stunning location and brilliant for sightseeing. We were on a fairly tight budget (with 4 children ranging from 7 to 12) so we camped at 'Camping Jungfrau'. It was a fantastic site and I did notice that they had wooden chalets to rent on site. Great restaurant and shop on site and very clean washrooms - no queues. No pool on site but there's a wonderful open air pool in the village which we made use of. Our children made lots of new friends in the park on site - very international campsite.

Lovage · 15/08/2014 09:50

Thanks - that looks lovely but they don't seem to have any chalets with two loos - that one's a real dealbreaker for us. But good to know there are cheaper ways of visiting Switzerland!

OP posts:
Jenijena · 15/08/2014 09:55

I stayed with keycamp a few years ago in Switzerland, Bella Tola. Even if keycamp don't have any double toileted caravans, there were lots of private stays on the site you may be able to investigate.

Went in a September and it was beautiful.

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