From a beach in Cornwall to an alpine meadow,`
travel experts give the lowdown on their favorite family Vacations.
Times Travel Team
1 Villa Pia, Lippiano, Umbria, Italy
The setting is an artist’s dream of rolling hills and cypress trees — and the food is sublime, served by white-bonneted Italian mammas on long communal tables. But you come to Villa Pia on the border of Tuscany and Umbria for the laid-back, house-party feel of it all. There are 17 simply-furnished rooms, and every family-friendly accessory you can think of. Parents can enjoy spa treatments while the children take cookery classes. If you tire of the adventure playground, tennis, two pools, trampoline and soft play room, Villa Pia is within an hour of Florence and Assisi.
Details From £70 per day for adults and £25 for children (2-12), on full board including drinks, from October to mid-May (excluding half-terms). Week-long summer stays £675-£860 per adult and £250-£430 per child; 00 39 0758 502027, www.villapia.com
2 Caserio del Mirador, Valencia, Spain
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The joy of staying in one of the five apartments in this large villa halfway between Valencia and Alicante airports is that you can decide how private or communal you want to be. The simple but chic apartments have cooking facilities but five days a week the English owners, Sarah and Johnny, who live on site, cook for anyone who wants it. The delicious meals feature local produce — squid, morcilla (the local blood sausage), lentils and steak. There is an outdoor pool, a trampoline and other play items tucked into strategic corners around the grounds, along with rabbits, goats and ponies. Although the beach is about 35 minutes away and Benidorm with its theme parks about 40 minutes, you’ll want to spend plenty of time just gazing at the stunning view down the valley at the Caserio.
Details Apartments for four for £750-£1,300 a week. Meals €20-€25, children’s tea €7.50; 00 34 965 973024, villajalon.com
3 Almyra Hotel, Paphos, Cyprus
No one blinks an eye as you wheel your buggy through the sleek, minimalist hotel lobby, with its white marble floor and picture windows opening on to the sea. There are buggy ramps everywhere and the crèche accepts babies from four months old. The hotel lets you book up everything from nappies to a buggy, so you don’t have to carry it with you. There’s a fantastic slate-lined pool and a restaurant serving a Mediterranean menu with a strong Japanese influence.
Details €100pp per night, B&B, 00 35 726 888700, thanoshotels.com
4 Château Rigaud, Mouliets et Villemartin, France
Take one gorgeous château in France, kit out a 50ft gallery with toys, and add a cinema room with five sofas and chapel bar for parents, and you have one of the most chic places for family stays. The château combines boutique hotel luxury with a house-party feel — delicious meals with free-flowing wine are served on the long wooden dining table. The English owners, Anna and Andrew Barwick, who originally targeted families with toddlers, are starting to offer activities for older children, such as tennis and French lessons and the possibility of supervised camping in a wigwam in the garden. The downside is that there is no availability this year until December.
Details £350-£450 per room for two adults and two children, including all food and wine; 00 33 5 57 40 17 99, chateaurigaud.co.uk
5 Europe’s 1st Baby and Children’s Hotel, Carinthia, Austria
A long waterslide leads into the outdoor pool of this hotel, which also has a large soft play area, a bouncy castle and go-karts around the grounds. There’s a Mini parked outside the restaurant for children to play in, and a character kangaroo makes a daily appearance. The hotel features child-friendly accessories such as potties, microwaves for heating milk and free childcare. All you eat and drink, apart from aloholic drinks, is included in the price.
Details From €95 per room per night, plus €33-€40 per child, full board; 00 43 47 32 23 50, babyhotel.eu
6 Clydey Cottages, near Boncath, Pembrokeshire
One of the best cottage clusters in the UK thanks to its five-star accommodation, spectacularly scenic setting and enough facilities to keep little ones occupied for hours, from farmyard feeding and egg collecting to an indoor pool opening on to a sundeck. Because there are only ten pretty stone cottages, each with a blend of contemporary fixtures and original character, you get a fairly private feel.
Details £350-£2,000 per week (1-4 bedrooms); 01239 698619, clydeycottages.co.uk or babyfriendlyboltholes.co.uk
7 Country Kids, near Montpellier, Languedoc, France
Country Kids blends the facilities of a luxury resort with the attention to detail and charm of a boutique hotel. For a price that compares very favourably with a week in a five-star resort, the hotel offers a complimentary crèche/kids club, run by qualified English-speaking staff, three activities per person per week, from kayaking and rock climbing to vineyard tours, a petting farm, most meals and two evenings of babysitting a week.
Details Two and three-bedroom apartments at £1,700-£4,400 per week, including most meals and activities; 00 33 4 67 97 18 94, country-kids.fr or babyfriendlyboltholes.co.uk
8 Finca de Arrieta, Lanzarote
Tucked about 300m back from the coast, this 30-acre estate is a glorious eco-retreat offering glamping at its best. Kids will adore it here: they can help themselves from the organic vegetable plot, feed the chickens, ride the donkey or splash about in a pool carved from pumice. They will especially enjoy the big adventure of camping in luxury eco-yurts. The yurts are furnished with elegant Indonesian day beds and exotic floor cushions and have decked terraces with hammocks and cushioned loungers. There are even granite worktops in the outdoor kitchens and a stylish wooden bath in the private bath house that comes with each yurt or cluster of family yurts.
Details Rentals from € 840 a week; 00 34 696 982 873, lanzaroteretreats.com or babyfriendlyboltholes.co.uk
9 Number 29 B&B, Yeovil, Somerset
With the help of her daughter, who is qualified in childcare, former restaurant manager Angela welcomes sleep-starved couples with home-made tea and cakes, coos over the baby while they settle in and then packs them off for the short stroll to the local bistro while she or her daughter babysit. The pièce de résistance is the lie-in babysitting service. Parents duck back under their duvets for a well deserved lie-in followed by a long lazy home-cooked Sunday brunch.
Details Three-night breaks from £200, babysitting from £7 per hour; 01935 420046, number29.biz or babyfriendlyboltholes.co.uk
10 Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall
Comfortable and unpretentious, Bedruthan Steps has the best mix of children’s facilities, activities and entertainment I’ve yet seen in a British hotel, as well as a fantastic location above Mawgan Porth beach. There’s an indoor and outdoor pool, tennis courts, soft play area, play room with games and painting; outdoor play area including trampoline, swings, mini assault course and pirate ship and a daily programme of activities which in school holidays includes survival skills and treasure hunts on the beach. Excellent children’s clubs, divided into five age groups, cost £20-£25 for a three-hour morning session.
Details “Villa” rooms with a garden start at £310 per night, half board, based on two adults and two children sharing; 01637 860555, bedruthan.com.
11 Bowood House, Wiltshire
Bowood Hotel, tucked away in the grounds of 18th-century Bowood House, opened last summer and while it attracts a big golfing crowd — thanks to the 18-hole course on its doorstep — it’s also family-friendly. Trade an hour in the stately home (stuffed with unexpected treasures such as Napoleon’s death mask, and the lab where Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen) and a gallop through the wonderful gardens for an afternoon in the adventure playground where there’s a full-size pirate galleon, high-up walkways and an almost 20ft vertical-drop slide. At the hotel, there’s a spa pool that admits children at certain times and a restaurant that does good brasserie staples.
Details Rooms for a family of four from £235 per night, including breakfast for the adults; 01249 822228, bowood.org
12 Family Resort Werfenweng, Austria
This all-inclusive eco-resort is great value for money. Superbly run and as child-friendly as it could be without turning into a crèche, it’s small enough for children to make friends but big enough to keep them entertained, with two swimming pools, playground and kids’ clubs with activities during the day and evening — they’re in German but in the summer holidays there are usually enough British kids for a posse. The big eco-bonus is a selection of electric vehicles that can be borrowed to pootle around the resort and up to the nearby lake, as well as a programme of activities — hiking, mountain biking, riding and so on — as well as excursions to the Hohenwerfen Fortress and Salzburg, about an hour away.
Details Family rooms from £192; 00 436 466 4500, werfenweng.at
13 Anassa, Cyprus
If you’re looking for five-star family pampering with gorgeous rooms, dreamy sea views, well-run children’s clubs, a clutch of London-standard restaurants and attentive staff on tap, the Anassa ticks all the boxes. Set in deliciously scented gardens, it also has probably the best location in Cyprus, near the Akamas peninsula nature reserve and away from the crowds. Children, naturally, won’t care about this — what they will enjoy are the indoor and outdoor pools, the huge breakfast buffet, coconut milkshakes at the poolside bar and canoeing off the beach. There’s also a new Hercules club specifically for teens that will include sailing, tennis, scuba diving, movie nights, kayaking and a local market trip.
Details B&B in two interconnecting studio suites costs £595 a night for two adults and two children over 6 and under 12; 00 357 26 888 000, thanoshotels.com.
14 W Towers Barcelona, Spain
The shiny, sail-shaped W towers over the waterfront and has quickly become a Barcelona landmark. It’s a brilliant base for a summer trip — on the beach at the end of the Barcelona boardwalk — with a great outdoor pool. Book one of the “Wonderful” rooms on one of the upper floors to wow even the most blasé child. Floor-to-ceiling windows with views over the Med; huge comfy beds, curtains that close at the touch of a button and ever-changing mood lighting will keep them happy, as will Wave restaurant, which serves an excellent burger.
Details Rooms for three from £272 per night; 00 34 932 952800, w-barcelona.com
15 Tuscan View Apartments, Tuscany
A perfect base from which to explore the hill towns of San Gimignano and Certaldo, this beautiful working estate has loads to keep families happy, from tennis and horse riding to a full-blown spa. Several trails wind through the estate, which you can explore on foot or by mountain bike. The stylish apartments are located in a dozen restored farmhouses, each group of buildings clustered around its own swimming pool.
Details Two-bedroom apartment is £440-£770 per week, including Dover-Calais ferry crossings; 01653 617004, www.inntravel.co.uk
16 Casa Olea, Priego de Córdoba, Andalusia
Halfway between Córdoba and Granada, this luxurious six-room guesthouse is surrounded by ancient olive groves. The nearby riverside woodland is teeming with wildlife — the only sounds of nightlife are nightingales, frogs and owls. Casa Olea is perfect for a walking or mountain-biking holiday exploring local villages, so would particularly suit families with older children. Home comforts include stylish bedrooms, a swimming pool and a sun terrace.
Details From €79 per B&B double, plus €10 for an extra child’s bed and €5 for a cot; 00 34 696 748209, casaolea.com
17 Gwel an Mor, Portreath, Cornwall
At this cluster of stylish timber lodges with their hot tubs, wood-burning stoves and snazzy kitchens, parents can pamper themselves at the spa while kids head for the putting green, indoor pool and adventure play area. A restaurant serves delicious Cornish produce and there is a tailor-made booking service for activities ranging from surfing to horse riding. But the best day out is at Gwel an Mor itself, where local ranger Gary Zammit leads walking safaris in search of slow worms, slugs and sparrowhawks. You can also go pond dipping, rock-pooling, badger watching and — best of all — meet Gary’s rescued foxes and fly his barn owl, Sly.
Details Two and three-bedroom lodges from £399 a week; 01209 842354, gwelanmor.com.
18 Flying Boat Club, Isles of Scilly
Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly, famous for its white sands, turquoise waters and exotic plants, has 12 beachfront cottages ideal for families. With no cars on the island, kids can roam around safely, beaches are usually empty and there is a sailing club and boat trips to the other islands. Everything’s close to hand: there’s a cycle shop hiring out bikes for all ages, a shop that’s more like a mini Waitrose, and the restaurant is just behind the cottages. There is a new spa for weary parents and a fabulous indoor pool with wide shallow steps perfect for youngsters.
Details Cottages sleep 6-10 and are priced from £197 per night. Book through i-escape (i-escape.com/flyingboatclub.php) and receive a free bottle of wine with dinner at the Clubhouse.
19 Pristava Lepena, Slovenia
This cluster of simple but comfortable chalets is in an alpine meadow in Slovenia’s Triglav National Park. It’s perfect for active children — loads to do, with much of it included in the price — tennis, table tennis, mountain biking, archery, small swimming pool, riding lessons and trail riding. The chalets are ideal for families, with extra twin rooms and pull-out beds and kids are welcomed in the restaurant in the evenings.
Details Chalets sleep 3-8 and are priced from £139 per night; i-escape.com/pristava-lepena.php
20 Casas do Sal, Portugal
Eight enormous former workers’ cottages make up this colourful rustic bolt hole down a long sandy track cutting through a vast 2,000-hectare estate, past cattle grazing beneath ancient cork oaks. Each has a terrace and kitchenette with shiny gadgetry. There’s a big games room, swimming pool and tennis court, and with horses and a boat down on the lake this place is made for kids. Babysitters can be arranged in advance so parents can slope off for an evening out to Alcácer.
Details Apartments for four from £80 a night. Book through i-escape (i-escape.com/casas-do-sal.php) to receive a basket of fruit, jar of locally made honey or a bottle of wine on arrival.
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