How France made our family's first adventure holiday a success

It was 10am and, breakfast barely digested, we were in the thick of a medieval battle. With surprisingly little need for guidance, our children had swiftly managed to construct four giant catapults from logs, rope, masking tape and kitchen colanders, out of which they were launching sodden sponges across a boggy field. It was the Blue Peter craft model that never was. 

What had begun as an ice-breaking exercise in team-building, with spotters, shooters and captains each tasked with yelling such satisfying commands as “Load!” “Clear!” and “Fire!” had fast become something of a free-for-all. A mutinous water fight ensued, with Sam the instructor inevitably relegated from teacher to target. He did a deft job of retaining a game smile under a remarkably vicious barrage of soggy bathroom sponges.

But then this is what Sam, and the two other “animateurs”, were there for: to monitor, motivate and, if need be, be moving targets for our children – so we didn’t have to. Throughout this Family Adventure Holidays weekend at Hotel du Moulin aux Draps in northern France, parents were encouraged to be on hand – this is no dump-and-run kids club – but how much they got involved with activities was up to them. 

Out of nine families, each with an average of two children ranging from four to 14, there were plenty of parents who did get elbow deep into buckets of icy sponge water (those holidaying dads just couldn’t help themselves). But others, such as the septuagenarian grandmother who’s lived long enough to know a strategic exit option when she sees it, were at liberty to toddle off to the local village museum. Or, as quickly became the way of things, sidle up to the hotel bar to natter with other parents, where it soon became apparent that we had more in common than a taste for affordable French wine.

Most of us were new to activity holidays, many dipping a tentative toe into group travel. “We’ve never done anything like this before,” said a couple from Tooting, travelling with their daughters, aged five and seven. “But now the kids are getting older, we thought it was time to get out of our comfort zone and try something new.” 

family adventure holidays

This taster weekend, of sorts, was hardly a risky investment of either time or money. For a fraction of the cost of a school-holidays weekend at, say, Center Parcs, you get three nights’ no-frills hotel accommodation in the easy-peasy-to-access Pas-de-Calais countryside, three meals a day and supervised activities thrown in. 

And it comes with a bit more cultural bang for your buck than a break in the British woods. It had taken my 11-year-old daughter, Ella, and me little more time than an average cross-London commute to travel to this rural corner of Calais, yet here we were, firmly in France. There’s a 14th century windmill crumbing charmingly over the nearby river, and at dinner on the first night, we were presented with a plate of snails – the most efficient way to band young British children against a common cause.

Plus, should we have wanted to, there was the opportunity to get chatting in French. A privately owned British company, Family Adventure Holidays, is sister to Voyager School Travel, a leading British organiser of term-time tours in France. Family Adventure Holidays was born to occupy Voyager’s French properties and staff outside term time, and most breaks come with activities that can be instructed in French, on request.  

Shorter getaways, such as this one, aren’t currently bilingual, but our Normandy-born animateur, Lily, took every opportunity to immerse the children in Gallic language and culture, nonetheless, from games of boules to interactions with the French hotel staff. The more resistant children wouldn’t stray beyond asking for an ice cream in French, and spent the weekend fuelled by this and hunks of baguette, rather than trying the food on offer. Escargots aside, the menu of northern French classics had been Anglicised, but was still too rich and fishy for some. Lily and the team won the young people over regardless, and from day one could be located by the Pied-Piper-like trail of children that followed in their wake from garden to basement games room – despite the intermittent whiff of drains down there – such was the adoration.

It’s a shame that Lily’s francophone faculties weren’t on hand during an afternoon’s sand yachting in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Instead, she accompanied those in the group with younger children to nearby Nausicaá – France’s lauded National Sea Centre. 

The rest of us zipped into dry suits and faced some looming wet weather with the sort of grim British determination that irked the local instructors, who would clearly rather not have been manning the beach on this out-of-season weekend. They issued scant instruction, largely in their mother tongue, leaving animateur Sam and a few of us scratching around for GCSE French to translate a lexicon of sailing terms and commands that seemed to invariably include the words “très dangereux”.

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In lieu of language, diagrams were drawn in the sand, and we were soon off across the beach, whooping with the glee of the clueless. I cast a concerned eye a few hundred yards along the shore, where our children were having their go. One of them (mine, of course) seemed to have been momentarily taken out of action by a stray boom. I couldn’t tell if Ella was wailing or not, what with the wind howling across the shore, the next gust of which sent our land yachts – a sort of wind surf with wheels – scooting with increasing speed towards the sea. I eyeballed remnants of the D-Day harbours lurking offshore. If all else fails, I thought, they’ll be a useful barrier between here and Dover.

Channel crossing avoided, we made it back to the hotel with life and limb intact. Or most of us did. A gung-ho coach driver and a bungled headcount meant that I got momentarily left behind (Ella, on board with a face full of freebie chocolate and her bevy of new friends, was oblivious to my absence). But the search parties were quickly deployed, and there’s nothing like a bit of trench camaraderie to cement the group’s dynamic. The escape room activity on offer at the hotel later was, literally, child’s play by comparison. Soothing spa treatments for parents followed, and a final night disco sealed the we’re-all-in-it-together deal. 

The children exchanged FaceTime contacts and parents, once again, gathered around the bar with cheers and thumbs up to a holiday with strangers who had become, much to our collective surprise, firm allies in the group holiday experience.

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The essentials

Sarah Barrell and Ella travelled with Family Adventure Holidays (familyadventureholidays.com). The three-night Opal Coast Easter Adventure costs from ￡249 per adult, ￡199 per child, including full board, based on families occupying one or two rooms, activities and transfers to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The new four-night Opal Coast Family Adventure Holiday is available July 30-August 3 and August 6-10, from ￡329 per adult, ￡299 per child, on the same basis, but with extra activities and transfers. 

Pan-European train booking service Loco2.com offers return tickets (no booking fees) from London St Pancras to Calais-Fréthun, from ￡58 per adult, and ￡52 per child (under 12; under fours travel free if no seat required). Tickets can be booked travelling from any UK mainland station through to France.