I meant to write this post the week we got back from holiday, but I didn’t get round to it and now it is nearly a month since we set off on our week long holiday to Wales. I am pleased to say that we had an excellent time.
We spent a long time before we booked it, thinking about what kind of holiday did we want and what we could manage with a two year old. This really helped because we didn’t want to commit to something too expensive or something that involved too much travelling.
In the end we decided what we wanted was a holiday that…
- Was less than a four hour drive away
- Had enough rooms for our friends to come with us, and for the two toddlers to have their room. The other family who came with us have a little girl Orla’s age so a good sleeping arrangement was a priority!
- Involved days out at the beach
- Included fun things to do on site in case it rained
- Fun days out that were less than an hour’s drive from the site
- Reasonable price
With that criteria firmly in mind it only took me forty minutes on Cottages.com using their filters to narrow down a self-catering cottage in Wales that met all of our criteria. (To be completely transparent I will say here that Rob works for Cottages.com, we’re not on commission or anything and we honestly do have a good holiday experience with them).
Gwynfryn Farm in Pwllheli, Wales had everything we were looking for. A self-catering accommodation with four bedrooms and open plan living/kitchen area. On site was an indoor swimming pool and sauna, a games room, toddler-sized soft play area and an outdoor play area.
Plus, being a farm, there were lots of animals. At 10am each morning the children have the option to help the farmer feed the chickens, pigs, horse, goats and rabbit. Orla particularly loved feeding the chickens! We also got to go visit the cow shed and see several adorable calves.
For us it was a perfect home base for the holiday which was important because the girls weren’t up for being out on day trips all day, every day and still needed either naps or down time. Having a place where we could relax and be entertained meant we didn’t feel we were wasting our holiday if we spent either a morning or afternoon on site.
Saying that, we did get some good days out. We spent about three days at the seaside and visited Welsh Mountain Zoo on the way down to the holiday to break up the journey. Orla hilariously undervalued the zoo experience, more interested in running up and down a grassy slope then looking at the sealions who were swimming up to us. That’s two year olds for you!
My favourite day was spent at LLanbedrog. It was a 15 minute drive from the Gwynfryn Farm. We spent about an hour looking around the Plas Glyn Y Weddw Gallery – the oldest gallery in Wales. To be honest the house and gardens kind of out-shone the artwork, but we enjoyed having a little cake stop in the café where Orla was happy to alternate spoonfuls of my Lemon Drizzle cake and Rob’s Banoffee pie.
After that we walked up a woodland trail to the Tin Man look out point to see a spectacular view of the beach below.
Just stunning! We made our way down and spent the rest of the day on the beach, making sandcastles, collecting shells and paddling in the low-tide waters.
We ended up staying at that beach longer than we expected and feeling too tired and grubby to cook a meal we went out for Fish and Chips. I am telling you, that fish and chips just never taste as good as they do when they come at the end of a perfect beach day!
And that was pretty much what our holiday was like, sand, sea, ice cream, market stalls, late night chats and card games, and fish and chips.
When we got home Rob and I had another week off work. We didn’t go away but we did do some days outs and just enjoyed being together as a family. I’m sure we will have our share of holiday disasters in the future but for now I am very grateful for a wonderful couple of weeks. Bring on next year!
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