This month's caravanners
Jan and Daniel James with Oscar (4), Rosalie (2) and Felicity (9 months)
Outfit used
2001 Bailey Ranger 520/4
2000 Citroën Berlingo Multispace 1.6
As Oscar, Rosalie and Felicity form the most opinionated and vocal part of our family, we wanted a holiday that would meet all their demands - and in pretty much every respect Brighton delivered. Sun, sea and lots of animals all featured on the list; along with lots of ice cream, good play areas and fish and chips. There are no huge surprises in Oscar's (four), Rosalie's (two) and Felicity's (nine months), wish list, but it was refreshing to find that great, traditional family fun was exactly what was on offer in Brighton.
We needed a child-friendly site as close to central Brighton as possible. Sheepcote Valley Caravan Club Site fitted the bill perfectly - just two miles out of the city centre and a short walk away from the Brighton Marina complex. The marina boasts a good range of quirky shops and factory outlets, restaurants,
a huge supermarket (very handy when only baked beans will do for tea) and a cinema and bowling alley - both very useful in case of wet weather. As it is a working marina you can also spend a very pleasant time admiring the boats and watching them coming and going
- fascinating for our little ones.
Sheepcote Valley has excellent family facilities, including a couple of baby and toddler rooms, good toilet blocks and a laundry room, essential with toddlers and babies. In view of all the rain this summer, we were pleased to see the site offered many hardstanding pitches, although, in fact, the weather was fantastic during our stay. Sheepcote Valley met with the children's approval, too, as there was plenty of scope for bike-riding and a play area. Best of all, it is in a great location. This was particularly important to us. Brighton's roads are very congested much of the time, and parking is both busy and tremendously expensive - 70p per 15 minutes in a couple of the car parks we saw. From Sheepcote Valley we could choose between walking to the Marina and catching a bus or (during the summer season) the Volk's Electric Railway into Brighton; or walking or cycling the two miles from the site to the town. The most picturesque and atmospheric option is a journey on the historic Volk's Railway, which comes in at £6 for a family of five. You can see there is quite a saving to be made by choosing a site that enables you to leave the car behind.
Once in Brighton, the children (well, the bigger two) were unanimous in where they wanted to go first - the beach! Brighton's beaches are shingle, which wrong-footed the children. However, they soon got used to the idea, especially as they could still paddle even if they couldn't make sand castles. Rosalie was fascinated by the pebbles, spending a lot of time examining them and playing with them, making stone towers and walls, while Oscar made trails in the shingle with his feet. After
a very happy afternoon in and out of the sea, we set off up the promenade towards the pier in search of ice cream. When Daniel lifted Rosie onto his shoulders as we walked, he found she seemed very heavy. Further investigation revealed her pockets were stuffed with stones. “But I like them,” she said, most put out that we insisted they were returned to the beach.
Brighton Pier has all the traditional attractions: ice cream, doughnuts, candyfloss, fish and chips, amusement arcades and even
a small fun-fair with a helter-skelter on the end of the pier. You get a great view of the sea front and beach, but for our tired children only ice cream held much interest.
We were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for our visit at Brighton Sea Life Centre, located right by the pier on the sea front. The world's oldest operational aquarium, this was once the best-known and biggest in Europe, and as recently as the 1980s still included dolphins among its exhibits. Thankfully Flipper-free these days, with all the dolphins having been re-homed, there are still over 150 different species of aquatic life to see. The aquarium
is underground, and initially we missed the disabled/buggy entrance located to the side of the main staircase. So we got off to a bad start carrying the pushchair, with Felicity sat like a queen on a sedan chair, down a very long and very steep but very elegant set of stairs to the sunken courtyard entrance.
However, things quickly improved inside as we made our way into the Victorian interior. Oscar was reminded of a theatre as it is rather dark, and he got quite excited. As we went into the main auditorium Oscar and Rosalie immediately set off in opposite directions as different tanks caught their eyes. Thank goodness the baby was strapped in the buggy and therefore couldn't get away.
Once we'd rounded them up, we set off again, all together. Within a minute or two they had found various interactive exhibits (mostly quizzes and information panels) with levers to pull or knobs to turn. These were great for older children who could read or had the attention span to complete the activity, but in fact turned out to be quite amusing for small children, who just pressed the buttons or pushed the handles. There was also great excitement as Oscar found a tank of Oscar Fish, “Look, fishes just like me,” and Rosalie found “Nemo, look it's Nemo! Lots of Nemos!” The huge open tank of rays, which look rather like long-tailed ghosts as they flap around, fascinated Felicity and they were at just the right level for her to watch even from her buggy. In the underwater tunnel we were surrounded by giant turtles and sharks just inches from our heads.
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