Which Dutch/ Belgian centre parcs?

[littlem133]

Hi all. This will be the first year I'm taking my kids (16,14 & 8) in holiday by myself. Small budget. Electric vehicle. Not a massively confident traveller. So I was thinking centre parcs abroad for ease. It's not too far to travel, things for each kid to do when we're there etc. Dover to Calais ferry looks ok. But which site? One not too far from Calais. Maybe a lake and good water slides. But do I need the one furthest south to try and get decent weather given that many sites are on a or with the UK?

If you’re on a small budget, I’d suggest doing Eurocamp or Yelloh instead of CP. Some of the bigger parks have almost as many activities as CP and they’re a lot cheaper. Look up Domaines des Ormes.

Thank you. I'll do that. I did look at some Euro Camp and the caravans (I won't rent!) weren't cheap!

Nearest to Calais is De Haan - which is a lovely seaside town in itself. The others might include traversing Antwerp on the motorway (which is not for the faint hearted). Have a look at Landal.com and Roompot.com as they can be cheaper than centerparcs. Duinrell?

If you are thinking of August - the end of the month can throw up some bargains as the Dutch kids go back to school earlier (as will a lot of Belgian kids this year as they've shortened the summer holiday). You would have to drive quite a long way south to get any noticeable change in the weather. August was scorching last year in Belgium. Normally the early summer months have better weather and August can be wet.

We did Het Vennebos with a range of ages. It is literally just over the Dutch Border. You do have to do Antwerpen Ring though. Flipping nightmare that was.

It also depends where you are in the UK. We use the hull-rotterdam crossing for centre-parcs. It's about 2 hours from Rotterdam to the CP sites we usually go to around Limburg (either the Belgian or Dutch ones in the area). My DC are younger though so we go to the smaller CP sites. Also look at landal and roompot. Depending when you plan on going there are loads of campsites in northern France/the Netherlands/Belgium with decent waterslides and facilities. I will admit though that southern France does have considerably more reliable summers.

Don't go to any that involve having to negotiate Antwerp. We ended up having to go through the centre, still don't know how that happened and it was a nightmare. Every rubbish journey is still measured up against Antwerp.
De Hann would be worth investigating, you could do day trips to Ostend and Bruges, the trains are very easy to use if you can drive to a station rather than driving into the towns.
Get the best accommodation available for your budget, they are more basic than the UK versions.

De Haan has the coastal tram too so easy to visit places up and down the coast. Blanckenberg has the sea life centre and a fair few activities. Ostend has the Atlantic Wall museum. The Belgian beaches are huge and sandy. www.belgiancoast.co.uk/en/sleep/all/type/holiday-park

Forgot about Sunparks at OostDuinkirke. www.sunparks.com/gb-en/holiday-park-belgium-oostduinkerke-aan-zee_OD-E_fp Cheap version of CP. The coast along there is more built up but the beaches are still good.

Thanks all for replying. It's been useful food for thought. I can only go that one week in august due to work/GCSE results etc. I've done some more geeky research and I think Het meerdal looks the best one for me in terms of cost and location. Just need to decide on how to get there- ferry or hook of Holland- and plan the EV charging points!

Het Heijderbos is great, we've been four times now I think. Their prices are so much more reasonable than Eurocamp. It's the UK Centreparcs that are over priced. The Dutch ones particularly are good value. We've always done the overnight ferry on Sunday night and slept in a cabin.

Placemarking…