Winter Break and Winter Lights at Bluestone Wales

Last week we were invited for a short winter break at Bluestone Wales to see their Winter Lights and take our toddler on some free-range adventures! Bluestone National Park Resort Wales is a holiday park in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, which is an amazing area with loads of things to do. This week we actually didn’t leave the park, because there’s a ton of stuff to do on-site and you don’t need to get in the car if you don’t want to. We’ve explored Pembrokeshire extensively over the years as it’s less than two hours drive from home and our favourite family day out if you’re in the area is Folly Farm.

It’s time to see what we got up to this chilly January week at Bluestone!

We arrived in the evening as I had a doctors appointment I couldn’t miss in the afternoon. I was a bit depressed about that as my health hasn’t been great lately, and I’ve been diagnosed with yet another problem, but heading straight to Bluestone for 5 days of fresh air, exercise and watching my toddler having fun was definitely just what the doctor ordered to perk me up. We arrived around 5pm – it was already dark, thanks January, I can’t wait for longer days – and there was no queue at all for check in. We were through the registration booth in about 3 minutes, having already visited the year before so we knew all the information.

Our lodge this week was a three bedroom Skomer lodge (you can read our previous review of a 2 bedroom Ramsey lodge) and this lodge was gifted to us for our stay as part of the Bluestone Blogger program. This was an amazing opportunity at just the right time for our family – previous stays we’ve paid for in full ourselves, so we already knew we loved Bluestone.

Bluestone is set a bit on a hill. My health as mentioned hasn’t been great, and my son, at two and a half, weighs the same as a four year old and even my husband doesn’t fancy carrying him up a hill so we decided to get a golf buggy. This cost us £90 for the short break and was a great investment for us because William absolutely loved driving around in it. You do need to have a full driving license to be allowed to drive so make sure you bring that with you even if you came on public transport or weren’t driving the car.

Skomer Lodge at Bluestone

Winter Lights at Bluestone Wales

One of the biggest draws for us of visiting Bluestone in the Winter is the Winter Lights. From January to March (check the website for exact dates) there is an amazing forest trail with a spectacle of magical lights. We saw these last year as well and there were quite a few different additions this year, so it’s definitely worth visiting every year. William absolutely loved them and we did it twice.

Wildlife & The Lake

We love walking and seeing wildlife. Wales and the UK has amazing wildlife to offer. We took our own duck food (it’s important not to feed them bread) and William loved feeding the ducks and moorhens. We also saw an amazing heron on the first day and got really close!

There is a picnic table outside the patio doors of each lodge and this is an ideal place to throw a handful of wild bird seed in the morning. Again, it’s better not to feed bread, and bread will also attract the seagulls. William loves seagulls – we actually hand raised two abandoned chicks this year – but a lot of holiday makers don’t as seagulls can be a bit of a menace, despite being beautiful and majestic (in my opinion anyway).

In addition to the big boys – seagulls, crows, jackdaws and magpies, we saw a lovely assortment of garden birds, including house sparrows, blue tits, great tits, chauffinchs, robins and dunnocks. We didn’t see any woodpeckers this week, but we did see one last year so we know they’re there.

Not to mention a cheeky squirrel who visited every day!

Adventure Center

The adventure center is indoor fun including mini golf, soft play, indoor play centre, amusements, climbing activities and a cafe as well as a gift shop, the creche and rooms for the activities such as messy play.

Blue Lagoon Pool

The Blue Lagoon Pool is great and is included with your stay – you get tickets which you can scan as often as you want for entry. It’s quite a small pool but was pretty empty in the mornings when we were there. Obviously in the summer holidays it would be a lot busier, especially as it’s open to the public after 12pm, so I’d recommend visiting in the morning. It has a toddler and baby area, another splash area, a wave pool, a lazy river and two large slides. Changing rooms are plentiful with lots of large family cubicles, as well as male and female areas if preferred. Lockers take £1 coins (which you get back at the end) and come in three sizes, but the large ones are definitely taken first, so I’d bring a couple in case you need two smaller ones.

We loved the pool and went every day.

The New Serendome

The Serendome only opened a few months ago so wasn’t here when we last visited. It’s a massive umbrella covering a variety of play areas and eateries which offers all-weather fresh air play. This is perfect for toddlers and younger children, but offers something for the whole family.

It has a soft building block area with beanbags, a large sand pit and sand castle area, a water play area, small playground, lego building and then a massive climbing area for older children who are way braver than me!

Here are some pictures of our time in the Serendome.

It also has eateries – more on that below in the eating section as I have quite a lot to say about eating out in Bluestone.

The Village and Playground

The village is located at the heart of Bluestone and it’s here you can The Oak Tree Restaurant, Knight’s Tafarn Pub Restaurant, Ty Coffi Coffee Shop, the Gift Shop, Grocery shop, Chip Shop, Pizza Restaurant (take out and eat in) and a large playground.

Eating out at Bluestone

There are lots of places to eat out at Bluestone. Of course the lodges are fully equipped for self catered, with a dishwasher so you don’t need to worry about doing the dishes afterwards, but if you’re like me, you definitely don’t want to be cooking for the family every night on holiday. Whilst at Bluestone we ate out quite a few times, we had a family meal in The Oak Tree Restaurant, Fish and Chips from The Chippy, we had lunch at The Terraces in Serendome and a meal at Wildwood Cafe.

What was different this year is I’m now eating gluten free for health reasons, so I was rather worried about eating out and not getting sick. I need not have worried as everywhere we went had excellent allergy menus and offered gluten free options.

As this blog post is already quite long and with lots of pictures, I’ve written an entire post reviewing the gluten free options and our meals out at every place we ate. I’d love for you to continue reading about eating out at Bluestone.

Would we visit again?

Absolutely – I can’t wait for our next time to make memories and have adventures at Bluestone Wales.

Disclosure – I was gifted a short break at Bluestone Resort as part of their Bluestone Blogger program, we paid for our golf buggy, all food and extra activities ourselves.