Driving through France - good places to stop in/near Reims?

[AnotherEmma]

Can anyone recommend a good place to spend a couple of hours in/near Reims? We will be travelling with children (age 5 and 21 months) so the more child-friendly the better. Essentially though we'll just need somewhere to eat, go to the loo and let them run around a bit.

There’s a park with inflatables, giant maze, a petting farm etc…. just outside Reims called Zig Zag Parc. Unfortunately outside of school holidays it’s only open Wednesdays and weekends.

This looks amazing, thanks so much! We are travelling back on a weekend day and it will be open (just checked the website) so we can go. Looks like the kids will love it.

Mumsnet is so helpful sometimes

North of Reims there’s another quick loo-stop at Aire d'Urvillers, which is about 2 hours from Calais, it has a kids playground, restaurant, and plenty of room to run around.

Great. Thank you. It's handy to have options in case the kids are kicking off at whatever point in the journey. I'm dreading it tbh! But nice stops will make it bearable.

Is Zig Zag Parc for littlies? Would an 8 year old & a 13 year old be able to spend a couple of hours there?

Looking at the website, I should think so. There's a zip wire and the minimum age is 7.

Have you driven on French motorways before? If not you will find their motorway stops very different from most British ones. Many have good size playgrounds and picnic areas.

We drove through France many times when DCs were small and regularly stopped to give them a run around, eat sandwiches etc.

As you come up to a motorway stop you will see signs indicating what is available. Drive in, if you don't fancy it or it looks too busy then drive on.

When DCs were small we tended to stop earlier rather than later for lunch as the motorway stop would be less busy.

Our joke retirement plan is to write a review guide to all the motorway stops in France. We will be creating a rating system for cleanliness etc (5 crossed mops and rim block cluster for the most outstanding).

GnomedePlume
Yes DH is French so he did plenty of motorway driving there before moving to the UK.
When we do this journey, which is long, we much prefer to travel by train, but because of the circumstances (last minute trip) the prices are prohibitive. So we don't have much choice. The two of us have done this journey by car just twice before. The last time, DC1 was 14 months old and it was really really hard work - he hated the car, we had to stop a lot and the stops took ages. We are really hoping that now he's older, and DC2 is older than he was, it might be a bit better. Fingers crossed!

Good luck! Do you have some sort of screen or audio books for DC1 especially? We found this useful. Audio books with headphones were particularly popular with DC1 aged 5.

Our DCs cant have been scarred by the experience. We are driving with DC3 and partner down to Provence in a couple of weeks. She has said she is looking forward to revisiting her youth and studiously ignoring stunning scenery with her nose in a screen!

I tend to look for Aires with a Court Paille, Buffalo or Paul as they are the bigger ones. It’s easy to look for those brands on google maps. These larger Aires often have a small playground as pp says (though last summer we found most closed off due to covid…)

In your shoes I would do 2 one hour stops rather than one 2 hour, if that fits with your travel plans.

Thanks both.
Yes DC1 has a Yoto player which is brilliant. We just need to make sure he has corded headphones (he has cordless Bluetooth ones but they don't work with it!)
He also has a tablet which we will try and ration, but will definitely get used when needed!
i think I'm more worried about DC2, she'll nap for a bit but apart from that I think she'll get bored... nursery rhymes can only go so far when you're driving for hours and hours!

minipie
Thanks for that suggestion, if I get chance I'll see if I can have a look for those on Google maps in advance, so we have a list of possible places to stop. I should really have made better note of the good and bad places we stopped last time, as it was 4 years ago and I can't remember!

We probably will have to do 2 stops for the French leg (320 miles!) I just wanted somewhere fun/interesting for one of the stops. Maybe it should be 1/3 or 2/3 of the way though rather than halfway! Gah.

@Fivemoreminutes1
We ended up stopping at both places you suggested! Thanks again, as your recommendations made our long journey much more bearable.

Parc Zig Zag is great, only a 5 minute detour on a quiet road off the motorway, and it was lovely to be somewhere that isn't a service station! In case this is useful for anyone else reading, a couple of points to bear in mind: firstly, it's all outside so if it's raining or very cold, don't bother. If the weather is likely to be warm and sunny, make sure you have swimsuits and towels accessible, as there's a really good aqua park section with a huge pool, water slides, and big paddling pool for littles. There's also lots of inflatables (for different ages), go karts, mini golf, a maize maze... you could probably spend ages there.

We weren't going to stop at Aide de Urvillers, but DC2 had been agitating for a while and various things we'd tried hadn't worked, so we decided to have a quick pit stop and I'm glad we did. It's much nicer than the other French service stations we've stopped at before. Restaurant with good food options, good play area, big shop and loads of self service coffee machines.

@AnotherEmma I’m glad you liked them