30 March to 3 April 2026 - A Visit to Center Parcs Whinfell

This year's visit, organised by my daughter to coincide with building work and a new kitchen at her house, was to Whinfell, where we were blessed with good weather. Jacob and his friend Seb marauded about on their mountain bikes whilst Jess and Grace (aka Gerty) just enjoyed the freedom to roam around the holiday village.

Badger Wood number 58 was our home for the duration of the trip, just a few minutes walk from the village square and pool.
 

After being cooped up in Kate's car, the kids were happy to make their way to the village square.

The staff at the boating lake clearly have time on their hands enabling them to play in the sand.

We spent some time in the 'Entertainment Hive'. The interactive darts games were most enjoyable, with technology working very well as regards scoring etc.

Seb got the first trophy but he later disgraced himself during a family quiz where a few howlers resulted in a disappointing result of 11th out of the 27 teams. We would probably have won if I hadn't had to leave half way through to cook tea!

Anyway, back to the darts, and a reversal of fortunes for me and Seb.

The control panel was firmly in the hands of Jess, who had to score zero points for anyone who missed the board. (It's a good job she's good at maths!)

Here's a surprised Gerty when she nearly scored a 180 that eluded the rest of us.

After the darts, the 'Bat Cage' was a little disappointing as it was quite hard to return the balls that flew out of the end wall. There were different modes for tennis (the easiest to hit), cricket (easy to hit against the side walls, but getting the end wall was hard), and baseball. Good fun though.

So Sue won that, but Kate thrashed us all at pool. She may do even better next time if her threat to buy a pool table for her revamped lounge comes to fruition.

There was an 'Arena' where a selection of games had the players dashing around and being knocked about by an over-enthusiastic 14 year old.

 

There were fairly frequent 10 minute walks beteeen number 58 and the village centre through lovely tree lined pathways. adorned with little sculptures from place to place.

Cowslips

The swimming pool includes a slide that takes you out of the main 'bubble'.

Here's the quiz team that performed so miserably after I had left to do the cooking.

And here's a result of some of the cooking. The boys claim to be allergic to mushrooms. They aren't, but they refuse to eat anything which they think has mushrooms in it. Haha, I chopped them up so small that they were indistinguishable from the meat...

Some of Kate's friends and their children came on Thursday on a day pass, so Sue and I took advantage of some sunny weather to climb nearby Carrock Fell. There will be a separate diary entry for that.

Before leaving on Friday, all except Kate (the maximum number of players was six) enjoyed a game of Puttify, a sort of electronic putting game suitable for the whole family, however young. It was very well designed and good fun. The Entertainment Hive certainly works very well so far as the electronics is concerned.

Whilst the others went for a final swim, I took a walk in the sunshine in the woods. Turning on the 'Merlin' app on my phone, I was surprised to find myself in the presence of bird song from up to 21 different species. They are listed below, with three doubtful sounds marked with a red dot that indicates they would not normally be expected here. I was surprised as to the lack of woodpeckers, though we did hear them earlier in the week, and some of our group spotted some of the elusive red squirrels that have their homes in the holiday village. A visit to the Bird Hide was completely futile - they were all hiding, despite feeding stations.

So that's it at Center Parcs for this year. A good time was had by all.

My diary entry for last year's visit is here.