Boris the Badger (Center Parcs)

Member Name: superguinness

Product:	Center Parcs
Date:	25/02/01 (1741 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wildlife

Disadvantages: can be pricey

This is the story of how a typical week in Center Parcs (Longleat January 2000) turned into a quest to see one of Britain's best wild animals.

My daughter and I stayed in an executive villa at Longleat. I did wonder what it would be like going as a single parent to Center Parcs (its always seemed very "family" orientated to me before), but we both really enjoyed it. The addition though, of a daily cleaner to come tidy up each day, was excellent.

I've been to all three Center Parcs in England and Longleat is the best in my opinion. It is built round a small lake but as the land rises steeply on both sides of the lake, they have had to build many sloping ramps out of the woodland, so that you can do the obligatory cycling all round the site. The ramps are made with the logs and fit into the scenery very well.

The main feature to all Center Parcs is the pool and surrounding indoor dome. The pool had the usual rapids, river and wave section. My daughter is an excellent swimmer, so we were in here every single day of the week - plus this is the only free facility on the site.

The dome contains an indoor river with little pools set amongst indoor trees. Here you will see many Koi and even some small ducks - very nice. Also here is a supermarket which even with my limited knowledge seemed reasonably priced.

However nearly all other facilities are er, well, just VERY EXPENSIVE. There's no other way of saying it really. If you spent all day doing the activities you would easily spend more than the cost of the holiday itself. Maybe most blatently overpriced are the sauna activities and the resturants. But with a bit of hunting round, there were some things worth the money, namely:

1. Cannoing. 2. Country Pancakes. 3. Archery.

As the week progressed my daughter became more and more fascinated by the wildlife show that was constantly taking place right outside our villa window. Soon a very tem
pting selection of cerials was available for all the local birds and squirrels to feast upon. They did not mind that the eating area was inches away from the window, nor that my daughter was positioned inches away on the other side of the glass.

The cleaner soon noticed my daughter's interest and mentioned that there was a badger and some deer that came near the villa. Well, badger watch duly began. It was Tuesday evening by now so we put out some half eaten crispy pancakes and some sardines - very tempting we thought. Alas no badger turned up by the time my daughter went to bed, but by morning all the food was gone. The next evening we tried rainbow trout. It looked like it had failed again and my daughter went to bed somewhat disappointed. Later I sat watching television with the bright lights from the living room panning out into the dark woodland. Suddenly I became aware of a stripey snout moving about in the distance. I quietly called to my daughter who ran to her bedroom window. The stripey snout had eyes. Then we could see its large lumbering body as it approached. This badger was BIG ! It came right up onto the patio outside the window, had a quick one minute feast and was gone.

This was repeated 30 minutes later when I put some more food out and again the next night and was easily the highlight of the stay. Nature still rules deep in the country, even amidst a multi million pound development such as Center Parcs.

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