Parenting in Sussex: The joy of a family weekend away
In my head, a weekend away with my family is a blissful time of stress-free fun and quality time together.
While the reality does include a lot of that, it’s not all skipping through grass-filled meadows, as I sometimes imagine it’s going to be.
Because all families (well, all families I know) bicker sometimes and get snappy with each other. That’s life and it’s normal.
But as I pleaded with my children not to wind each other up when we were away at Seal Bay Resort in Selsey this weekend, I did wonder why I had thought that I wouldn’t need to parent them just because we’d moved 25 miles down the road for a couple of days.
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Overall we had a great time, but even when you’re on holiday there will still be arguments and sibling rivalry. I always feel guilty if I have to tell my children off, particularly when we’re away as I worry it will ruin their fun, but judging by the smiles on their faces across most of the weekend, I think they escaped unscathed.
We were invited to review what it’s like to stay at Seal Bay, a West Sussex seaside holiday park nestled right on the coast in Selsey.
Offering a perfect spot for family beach holidays and self-catering breaks, it even offers the possibility of holiday home ownership.
We drove down after school on Friday, and we were in our classic lodge accommodation, sitting on the decking, soaking up the spring sunshine with wine in hand (alcohol strictly for adults only!), by 5pm.
We ordered a pizza from the on-site Papa Johns take-away to enjoy in our spacious, open-plan living area, before taking a drive round the resort to see what was on offer for our weekend away.
The resort is huge, so much so that it offers a complimentary bus service for those who don’t want to drive round. You can obviously walk, too, but it may take up to half an hour to get between the furthest reaches of the park.
We ended up at West Sands – Waterfront Quays, home to restaurants, food trucks, an arcade, the swimming pool and multiple activities.
We also tried out the White Horse Theatre, in the White Horse area of the resort, which had some fun audience-participation quiz games on when we arrived. My kids loved calling out the answers and getting involved with dancing the Macarena!
The next day, they had kindly been booked in for some of the many activities on offer throughout the resort. They can all be booked via the park’s app, Cove Holidays, from where you can find out all information about the resort, the entertainment schedule, opening times, restaurant menus and lots more.
First up was body Zorbing, which saw them climb into a clear inflatable ball, where they can run, roll and bump into each other.
Later, we visited the Dockyard in the White Horse Complex, which has adventure bounce nets, wall climbing and adventure golf.
We went for a dip in the Oasis Bay swimming complex towards the end of the day. With a lazy river, slides, tots area and more, it’s great fun for all the family, but it was quite busy when we arrived at 4pm. Luckily, my children had been booked onto the Go Aqua Run inflatable session after the pool closed, which was a lot more chilled out.
As well as food box offerings at the resort, such as Box Fish, Box Greek, Box Asian, Box Greek, Nathan’s Hot Dogs and more, there are also restaurants. We had a really relaxed meal at Smokey’s BBQ Kitchen, which served something for everyone.
What I love about Seal Bay is that having your own self-catering accommodation gives you a really nice balance between enjoying all the facilities and entertainment the resort has to offer, and having some chilled-out downtime.
Before we headed home, we took advantage of the gorgeous sunny weather and had an ice cream on the pebbles and looked out to the Isle of White in the distance. We chatted about our favourite part of the trip and had a few laughs, too. Maybe we did get the parenting-while-away malarkey right after all.
See more at https://cove.co.uk/sealbayresort/