Home Travel Christmas Break: Bluestone Wales Kingdom Of The Elves

Christmas Break: Bluestone Wales Kingdom Of The Elves

by Jessica Amey

If you are looking to go away on a Christmas break then we have just got back from Bluestone in Wales where we had the most brilliant festive family break. It was actually our second stay at Bluestone having been there back in May. You can read our first post about it here – Bluestone Wales Review – and the second part here – Campy Smokey And A Trip To Tenby, we had a such a great time and were really excited when we were invited back to stay to see what the resort is like at Christmas.

It’s the first time we’ve been on a family Christmas break and it was the perfect time to get away as we’ve been working so hard over the last month and having some time to just chill out was very much needed.

We stayed in a Gateholm lodge this time which is one of the upside down lodges so the bedrooms were all downstairs and then there was a large open plan living area upstairs, we loved it. There are so many different lodge options and some of them cater for large groups of people so you could go with lots of friends.

I didn’t get many photos of the lodge but you can see lots of it in the video at the end.

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One of the things we did differently from last time was hire a buggy, we didn’t do it in advance last time so by the time we got there they had sold out so we booked early to make sure we got one. I’m so glad we did as it really does make the holiday a lot more fun, and given it didn’t stop raining the entire time we were there meant we could still go out exploring. It was so much easier to go swimming too, last time we had to walk but when you have lots of stuff to carry and two kids it all gets a bit tricky!

The swimming was just as good as we remembered, the pool there is our favourite of all swimming pools, they have a rapid river which takes you through to the outside bit which is quite an experience when it’s heavily raining and blowing a gale! Then there is a wave machine which goes on every half an hour which is such good fun. They also have some slides and a couple of smaller pools. There are lots of different sized family changing rooms too, a couple are really big which is great. They have changing mat tables in too.

Bluestone are really well equipped to deal with larger families, just little things like the lodges having really large saucepans mean you can cook up big meals, we made a post of Bolognese sauce that lasted us the entire time we were there. We stopped at the large Tesco in Carmarthen that you drive past about 25 mins from Bluestone and stocked up, I would definitely recommend doing that as the shop onsite is fairly small and although you could buy your meals from there the selection isn’t that big.

We took a walk into the woods where Camp Smokey is, it’s not open and this time of year but you can still walk around it all. It’s a really nice area to go exploring and you can see all of the treetop walk activities from there.

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Then on one of the days we went to do the big Christmas activity, The Kingdom of the Elves. Set up in the adventure centre you walk through lots of different rooms and do activities to earn stamps for your cards. You go through in fairly small groups which is nice and the Elves were all really great with the kids. It was such a good festive experience for all the family. Again I didn’t get many photos as it was quite dark and my phone was full and wouldn’t take any more pictures. There is some footage of it in the vlog at the bottom though.

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Bluestone is the perfect place to stay now matter what the weather but they really do make Christmas breaks extra special. There is a lights display in the village every evening at 6pm and there are also lots of crafting activities you can do as well as a pantomime and a storytime with Santa session. You get a list of all the things going on each day so if you wanted to you could fill your entire day or if you prefer you can just take it easy like we did. The only thing that was missing was snow, it would look absolutely amazing there with a layer of snow covering all the lodges.

I did lots of vlogging during our stay so this is one of my longest videos but it captures all the things we did during our stay, as well as what the lodge was like.

Thanks so much to Bluestone for inviting us to stay. No payment was received for writing this post and we paid for all the extras ourselves.

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