DESTINATIONS LES VILLAGES NATURE FAMILY HOLIDAYS
LEFT: Country Premium apartment
RIGHT: Marijke cycling around the resort
BELOW: Swimming complex Aqua Lagoon
From here, we picked up a map in The Welcome House, and headed to our one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a small, low-rise block. Other apartments sleep up
to four, while cottages sleep between four and 12, and each one has a small kitchen, dining area, lounge, bathroom and bedrooms, all decorated in natural colours with leaf or bird-print fabrics and art. Our wristbands doubled up
as room keys, so we quickly dropped our bags and headed straight for the cycle hire. If you drive to Les Villages
Nature you can bring your own bikes, which are definitely the best way to get around. We chose from the huge selection available – bikes with baskets, panniers, child seats or pull-along carriages for kids, plus mountain bikes and tandems. We cycled
The Aqua Lagoon is an oasis of pure fun, including a rock- climbing pool where if you slip, you fall in!
along the lakeside path, past ducks, swans, an adventure play area, crazy golf course, over a bridge and to the conveniently located cycle parks, which can be found everywhere around the resort. It was so quiet, we barely saw another person, which was surprising given it was half-term for both the French and English.
w WATER WORLD We then headed for the Aqua Lagoon. This huge asymmetrical
glass structure is home to massive indoor and outdoor pools, heated year-round to 30C by a natural thermal spring. Our wristbands let us through the turnstiles and into an oasis of pure fun, with all manner of different pools, water slides and play areas – from a ‘beach’ complete with a wave machine that starts every half-hour, to a rock-climbing pool where if you slip, you fall in! There are toddler and baby
play areas with toys, water sprays and jets; or for older kids, seven huge water slides, some with inflatable rafts, offering varying levels of excitement. Plus there are outdoor pools with monkey bars, water netball, floats and our favourite, the crazy river, which propels you round in a strong current, under waterfalls and down little slides. Three hours later, and with
fingers like prunes, we emerged happy, exhausted and hungry, so headed to Vapiano, an Italian restaurant along the promenade, for soup, pasta and pizza, before heading back to our apartment and falling asleep instantly.
w READY, STEADY, BAKE The next morning, we cycled in the other direction past a deserted outdoor beach, complete with volleyball and boating – no doubt popular in the warmer months – to the working BelleVie Farm. There, we donned our aprons and hairnets alongside 16 other parents and kids (all French) for a one-hour breadmaking course. The two teachers, Antony and Xavier, were excellent, explaining everything in French, then in English for our benefit, teaching us where flour comes from, how it’s grown, harvested, ground
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travelweekly.co.uk 7 February 2019
PICTURE: LUC BOEGLY; CECIL MATHIEU
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