Bluestone Wales

We've just arrived back from a mid-week break at Bluestone Wales (Pembrokeshire).  I actually spend a lot of time in Pembs as I have family there and used to live there when I was younger, but I'd never been to Bluestone before.  I've actually never been on this type of 'holiday resort in the woods' holiday before, so it was a totally new experience.  This is a photo-heavy post, so sorry if it took a while to load, but I took a LOT of pics there and these are the ones that made the cut :)  I've also created a Pinterest board of these pics, and some more which you can see here.

The Lodge - Skomer

We were put up in a Skomer lodge, this is a 3 bedroom (2 twin rooms, 1 double (2 en suite)).  It had a lounge area with TV (freeview) and a DVD player, 2 sofas (seated a total of 4 adults - could have probably squeezed more on there if we were shoulder to shoulder and skinny).  The house was fitted with stairgates at both the top and bottom of the stairs, it also had a Mothercare travel cot and a high chair.

All of the furniture in the lodge felt really well made and solid and all of the bits and bobs in the kitchen were lovely too, in fact, I'd have loved it if they'd sold some of the pieces on site, I really wanted to buy their sugar bowl and water jug :)  If you're reading this Bluestone, maybe something you could consider stocking in your shops :)

They also made great use of a bit of landing space upstairs by putting down a massive flat-ish bean bag and flat screen TV ideal for kids to chill out at, great idea!

Below are some pictures of the lodge, and little touches from the different rooms.

My shower essentials!  It was a lovely sized shower, and felt really solid

Only negative about the kitchen was that the microwave was a couple of milimetres too small to fit our Tommee Tippee microwave steraliser in, luckily we'd brought some Milton tablets with us so we just used the steraliser as a cold water one instead :)

Out and about

A few steps up our lane took us to the main one-way route around the park.  You can hire golf buggy's for about £25 a day or £80 for the week to help you get about.  We didn't need this, but if Squidge was a bit older it might have been something we'd considered if we were taking part in some of the activities.

Here's some pics of around the park & village.

Our view at the back of the lodge

A little row of prettily coloured houses in the village

A view of the village

The Farmhouse grill entrance

Great idea - milk vending machine!  I think they were in the process of fixing it as it was out of order when we were there

Millers cafe & bakery - this is where you can pick up fresh bread, croissants etc.  We had lunch here on our first full day, we opted for one of their pies which were super tasty! (hubby had the steak & gravy, I had the vegetable pie)

The Knights Tafarn - we had lunch here, food was nice, homemade chips were really lovely.  Only problem was a couple of dirty glasses, but they replaced them and the drink very quickly and politely.

View of the hills in the distance

Great for photography

Just wondering around the place I found loads of interesting things to photograph.  While I don't pretend to be any good at photography or know what I'm talking about, I do enjoy taking pics of things, here's a few of my favs.

Squidge at Bluestone

It wouldn't be a post if I didn't include some pics of Squidge now would it :)  I have to say, he was amazing.  His first time sleeping in a different cot/bed etc and he slept really well :)  Here's some of my fav pics of him during our stay :)

Squidge on Daddy's lap, looking rather quizzical.

Squidge giving a fist pump, rather pleased with himself.  That smile...

I love this pic, I feel like it's our first glimpse of what he's going to start looking like as a toddler/child

Overall I was really impressed with how clean the lodge was and how well made everything was, it all felt very solid.  It's a well thought out resort and despite lots of people telling us how massive the park was, we didn't find it too bad, perhaps if we had young children we'd feel differently.  

We did also check out the Blue Lagoon water park while we were there, Squidge hated it but he hates water, so that's no surprise, but the hubby loved it and had lots of fun.  He was gutted we didn't have time to go back.

We took Squidge to the Baby Sensory hour (£7) too which was in the adventure centre.  We missed the first half sadly, we were about to leave the lodge to go when he decided to scream the place down for his bottle an hour earlier than it was due... either way, he loved it, he loves looking at other babies :) We had a story time, and a little pretend picnic.

Things we liked:

• Large, well made and warm lodge
• Pies in the cafe were super yummy
• Bluestone were quick to fix things (the light outside our lodge didn't work and within about an hour of us letting them know, they had maintenance out to fix it)
• It all seemed very well organised, staff were always very friendly and happy to help
• Comfy sofas (though, could have done with an arm chair too)

Heads up:

• If you have a bottle fed baby, either bring a small steraliser, or milton tablets with you to cold-water steralise
• Remember to bring your own washing up liquid, black sacks, loo rolls etc as what they set you up with isn't quite enough for the stay
• If you're using the travel cot, I'd bring a couple of thick extra towels as the mattress is very hard (pretty much like board), we laid down some towels on top of it so it was softer (don't forget to bring your own linen too)
• Activities aren't included in the price of the stay, so budget ahead of time!

We really enjoyed our stay at Bluestone and would certainly be up for going there again.  Although next time we'd hope for better weather so we could take part in more activities, and we'd probably use it more as a base and sight-see south Pembs a bit more :)

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*Accommodation was complimentary, all opinions are my own