A stay at Centre Parcs Woburn Forest with tweens

Two weeks ago yesterday my 9 year old fractured his wrist in two places. He fell off his scooter as we were walking from our cabin, off to spend our first day exploring Centre Parcs Woburn Forest. Instead of swimming and trying all the activities we had booked, we spent the day at the local A&E, returning to Centre Parcs with two tired and upset children.

A stay at Centre Parcs Woburn Forest with tweens

We had been looking forward to our stay at Centre Parcs Woburn Forest for weeks. Many of our friends had stayed at the different Centre Parcs and we couldn’t wait to experience it for ourselves. We chose Centre Parcs Woburn Forest as it was just an hour from where we live in London and we didn’t want to travel far for a 3 night stay. We spent hours choosing the right activities, booking restaurants to eat in, and packing what we needed.

We stayed in a Woodland Lodge and upgraded so we were within easy walking distance of The Village Square. Our Lodge was lovely, with two bedrooms (both en-suite one with a spa bath), the open plan living area was equipped with a TV and log burner; the kitchen contained a dishwasher, coffee maker, wine fridge; and the private patio area had a brick-built barbecue stand. There was everything we needed for our stay.

On our first night we walked to The Village Square and ate at Cafe Rouge. Our meal was ok and we stopped off to let the children play in the play area before we headed back to our Lodge. Unfortunately Little Sis didn’t feel well and was sick all through the night – not a great start to our weekend break.

The next morning we decided head out for a walk as she felt a bit better. The children took their scooters as we hadn’t brought their bikes. Unfortunately Big Brother came off his scooter at the bottom of the hill by The Village Square. We instantly knew he had hurt himself. As well as a scraped knee his left hand was hurting so we took him to the Medical Centre which was luckily at The Village Square. The Nurse cleaned up his knee, took one look at his wrist and suggested we take him to the local A&E. She put his wrist in a sling and even gave us a lift to our car (the car park was miles away from the site!).

So we spent all day at Bedford Hospital A&E rather than doing the activities we had carefully booked. The kids were really patient but we were at Hospital most of the day. Big Brother needed 3 x-rays to check the damage to his wrist (two green stick fractures). He was given a temporary cast and a sling as we could return to Centre Parcs Woburn Forest. Now you are not allowed to take cars on site outside of changeover so we were really grateful that the Security team helped us out. They picked us up from the car park and drove us back to our Lodge, as my son wasn’t capable of such a long walk after the day we had had.

Unfortunately everyone just wanted to go home but we decided to stick with our plan for a barbecue at our Lodge and see how everyone felt in the morning. Thankfully the kids woke up wanting to explore the rest of the site so we went for a walk and managed to do the Archery activity we had booked, played a round of mini golf and even managed to squeeze a boat ride on the lake.

We couldn’t go swimming and it felt like we didn’t really get the best Centre Parcs experience. Our Lodge was nice and it felt quite private, despite being surrounded by hundreds of other guests. We liked the look of The Plaza and the kids saw loads of activities they would like to try if we visit again. We’re not a great advert for Centre Parcs but hopefully we will go again one day.

On the way home we stopped to visit Bletchley Park, the home of code breaking during the Second World War. Read our review of Bletchley here.