the times | Thursday November 25 2021 5times2
‘Y
es, I am gwumpy,” said my
then five-year-old
daughter Matilda who,
alongside her poor
eyesight, had also
inherited her father’s rhotacism, poor
thing. “Because I weally do not want
to leave Center Parcs.”
Her innocent remark from five years
ago has, to her continued irritation,
become one of those family folklore
phrases we repeat ad nauseam because
it makes us laugh. We were in the car
at the time. My wife Miranda, Matilda,
her big sister Daisy (then eight) and I
were driving away from our third
short stay at Center Parcs in Elveden
Forest in Suffolk, the biggest of the
lot. And for what were then our
hollowed-out, exhausted lives as
parents of young children,
Center Parcs was for a
short while our refuge, our
Shangri-La, a place we
didn’t have to lift a finger,
and somewhere so classy
it was spelt Parc not
Park. A hut in the
woods, warm beds, hot
water, bikes and at least
the appearance of
country living to people
whose London flat didn’t
have a garden. What’s not
to like?
The kids loved it even
more than we did, which is
why they nagged us for at leastthe following three years about
returning. Not for them the authentic
feel of squelching mud, the wind on
your face, real sheep and cows and a
bracing splashy walk followed by
homemade fruitcake. No, they were
very much into the “Subtropical
Swimming Paradise” with a wave
machine — a WAVE MACHINE —
and a ridiculously long slide that
would see them while away whole
afternoons. Kids have their faults, but
at least they are not snobs when it
comes to this sort of thing. And Center
Parcs is not for the snobbish. In fact, it
probably merits a place in the Oxford
English Dictionary under the word
“unpretentious”.
I also liked it myself, after a fashion.
When I was growing up I had classic
left-liberal parents, the sort who
would never buy white bread
or let us eat “all that fried”
canteen food at the
comprehensive my brother
and I were sent to (you
can’t vote Labour and go
private can you?). My mum
took my brother and me
to McDonald’s once and
tried to order a “small
Mac”. So we didn’t really
want to go back after
that crimson-faced
embarrassment. School
packed lunches were
cheese and wholemeal
sandwiches and an
apple, and holidays
were never packaged,
and always involved
cottages in the British
countryside and
uplifting visits to
churches (my dad
was a vicar). SoParcs: the ‘Boden Butlin’s’ kids love
I would enter a futuristic utopia of the
kind that is depicted when modelling
human life on Mars. The marketing
shows the dome glowing
supernaturally in the British gloom.
Even though it was Bedfordshire in
March, I fantasised we would spend
our entire time wandering semi-naked
through waterfalls like the blue people
in Avatar. We could pretend we had
been chosen to be the last people on
Earth. It turns out I was wrong. The
geodesic dome is apparently just a
plastic roof on the leisure centre with
water slides. Sorry, not leisure centre,
“Subtropical Swimming Paradise”. But
trust your gut on this one.
The second shock is the cost. How
can it be this expensive to house
families in something akin to an open
prison? Or at least an open prison as
they might have in the Netherlands,
where the company originated. A bike
ride of less than five minutes butted us
up against the containment fencing, so
we ended up busying ourselves with
expensive archery sessions at the
“Jardins des Sports” to add pins to the
“activity pin badge lanyard”, which
itself costs £3.
It can only be that the entire place
has nuclear-strength reinforcement.
These are not prisons to keep middle-
class holidaymakers in; they are to
keep the undeserving hordes out when
our climate doomsday comes. Then, if
you are among the chosen ones, you
will be saved from the floods, pollution
and overheating by being evacuated to
the Center Parcs geodesic domes. No
wonder these things get green belt
planning permission so easily. Dashing
for your life to the Subtropical
Swimming Paradise, now revealed in
its true purpose, the “West Sussex
Center Parcs Survivalist Dome
Community”, you may even encounter
Boris and Carrie Johnson racing for
the last spot, with little Wilfred already
pestering for a go in the wave pool.
So don’t worry about all those
chainsaws felling mighty oaks in the
West Sussex woodland. We need to
give up on real trees and move on.
Center Parcs will create a Noah’s Ark
of humanity that may not be inclusive
but at least preserves a very specific
type of British parent, with not much
by way of practical skills but lots of
expertise in middle-management.
New life will begin again, not just
with the sheer numbers of tots
crowded into the
Typhoon flume ride,
but the steamy
conditions in the
Subtropical Swimming
Paradise perfect for
bacterial evolution to
accelerate with
exciting results. As
the noxious
purple-clouded
sun sets on the
rest of mankind,
within Center Parcs
parents will turn to
each other and
conclude that, yes, it
cost the Earth but it
was just about
worth it. The kids
love it, and there
is a ball pit in
Café Rouge.CENTER PARCSIt used to be our
Shangri-La with
a wave machine
Ben Dowell
Center Parcs was also my own
dirty secret.
In the Arcadia of Center Parcs there
are restaurants and shops catering for
every need. You have log fires, I
remember, but you buy your wood in
ready-made bundles that just need
lighting, so there’s no faffing with
kindling and firelighters and the risk
of being unmanned by failure in one
of the key macho arts. You can go on
cycle rides but don’t really need a map.
The paths are laid out and there are
woods and even deer. And if you want
to invite other friendship or family
groups to neighbour up, it’s easy and (I
am told) rather convivial. We didn’t do
that, but my wife did go on her own
with the kids once and it was a doddle
(or so I told her, ho ho).
The whole thing was surrounded by
a huge wire fence that gave it the air
of a prison, but at least it created a
feeling of safety, which is all you want
as a parent. You also don’t want any
Tom, Dick or Harry walking in, not
when you have spent so much money.
Which brings me to the one, rather
defining, thing I didn’t really like
about the experience, and which
remains the reason we have limited
our sojourns to just the three stays:
the eye-watering expense.
A four-day stay in Elveden Forest at
the peak period of half-term next
February would set us back £1,449 (the
lowest price available according to
their website). And now we don’t need
to. We have bought our own place on
the Welsh border, a barn that affords
us all the walks, cold-river swims and
fruitcake we like. The kids have never
forgiven us.Daddy, is this
giant dome
in the forest
really eco?
You don’t
know you’re
born, son