Bluestone in Wales???

[Rascal79]

Hi. Just wondering if anyone had been to bluestone and what you thought? Which accommodation did you stay in and did you do their inclusive package?

Am watching with interest...

Anyone????

Anyone???

We've been recently. Thought it was great and the lodges were lovely- we stayed in a Skomer. I haven't been to Center Parks but I liked the fact it was encouraged that you get off site and explore the lovely Pembrokeshire coast. The swimming centre and adventure centre are great if you have less good weather though.

What's the inclusive package?

We hated it.

The shop is horrendously expensive, the restaurants are expensive and crap. There are no washing machines or laundrette and they charge you £10 to do a load of washing for you but it takes 2 days

The pool is quite nice, but there are only 3 family changing rooms and it gets so so busy.

You really need one of the electric buggy things if you have kids, because the place is on a really steep hill which makes using the bikes you can hire very hard work. If you do want bikes then you need to prebook as they have nowhere near enough - we went on an off-peak week in the autumn and they still ran out.

The bed had a waterproof sheet on - the adult bed , there was nowhere to hang towels and swimming things to dry.

I am just glad that we paid £200 for our 4 nights instead of the £1000 which I have seen the cost is during the summer holidays!

Oh the area is beautiful, I would go back to Pembrokeshire for sure, just not Bluestone.

I didn't think the shop was expensive, but we didn't use it much, nor the on site restaurants, except the first night for take away which I thought was comparable to take away at home and was tasty. The pool did have more than 3 family changing rooms- there were loads of them round the corner from the first 3 you see when you first walk in (we made that mistake the first time we went). We didn't have an electric buggy- we walked everywhere. We were located in lodges at the furthest point from the car park and pool (lake-side), but still took no longer than 15 minutes (our children are 6 and 4), since there are separate, short-cut paths for walkers compared to buggies and bikes. Some people would hate even that much walking though, I know. No waterproof sheet on our bed either.

There are no washing machines but I knew that in advance and packed accordingly. Towels and swimming things were thrown over the banisters (obviously this would not be possible in a single storey lodge so would be worth packing a travel washing line).

I agree that it's not worth £1000 (we paid £500 odd at Whit this year for a 3 bedroomed, 3 bathroomed lodge with a kitchen fitted out with everything we could need) and I am sure you could find a lovely holiday cottage in Pembrokshire cheaper. But we've had self catering holidays in this country before that have been a wash-out when it rained. For us, Bluestone provided a base where there were other options if the weather was poor, plus a safe environment for the children to explore a little, while at the same time allowing us to get out and around Pembrokeshire. I think it depends what you want out of a holiday, TBH.

Fay - I suspect it works better if you have older kids. Ours were 7 months and 3.3. We knew there were no washing facilities, but hadn't banked on there being nowhere to hang things to dry - the 3 year old was being potty trained so I spent a lot of the week doing hand washing and trying to dry things.

I think it would be fine if it didn't oversell itself. It isn't luxurious, or 5* or any of the things it tries to sell itself as - so we went with high expectations which weren't met at all.

We went and loved it!

Didn't use the shop as I took food with us. The house was very well equipped and clean. The pool was great and there were definitely more than three family changing rooms.

I'm a lazy cow with walking so we hired a buggy and it was great to be able to whizz up to the pool or the adventure centre.

However, the restaurants served poor food but then I don't think that it can be said for just Bluestone we all found it rather awful all over Pembrokeshire to be honest.

The spa was brilliant, I had a wonderful afternoon to myself being pampered

I would really recommend going for a long weekend out of season with the family. It was fab for a short break

We loved it, it was before we went to CP which had much better facilities but was much more expensive
We didn't have very high expectations, granted, but we really liked it and though it was good value for money