Last week we were on holiday in the Loire region on France. I’ve worked in lots of different areas of France but the Loire is one of the places I never worked, and have only been to a few times on holiday. It was a long drive from the north west down to Dover, where we stayed overnight, and then another long day in the car to get to our campsite.

We all had a really good time while we were away. The weather was hot but often cloudy, and the boys spent a lot of time in the pool while we were there. The Loire is famous for its chateaux so we couldn’t go there without visiting a few!

The first one we went to was Blois chateau, once the home of the French king. They had these cool ‘Histo’tabs’ that you can see Toby using here. They had lots of information about the castle, but also some of the rooms had things to scan which brought up virtual images of the room as it used to be as you moved the camera around. They definitely kept the boys interested for a lot long than they would have been otherwise.

Gabe’s photo was also taken at Blois, it was a big place and we were just having a rest in the courtyard before carrying on our tour.

We also went to Chenonceau which is a very unusual chateau built across the river – like a bridge and a building in one! There are so many chateaux in the Loire that we couldn’t possibly visit them all so instead we went to Parc Mini Chateaux which has giant scale models of 41 of the chateaux of the Loire! Again they had tablets for the kids to follow a trail and play games along the way which kept their interest. I would definitely recommend it if you’re ever in the area.

We’d talked about going kayaking on the Loire while we were there but with only really 6 days there we didn’t manage to fit it in. On our last day though we did find somewhere to park where we could access the river, and what started off as a paddle ended up with me and the boys going for a swim! It was lovely at the end of a hot day but I don’t know if it’s quite convinced me to take up wild swimming in the UK yet.

All in all we had a lovely holiday, our only complaint was that we wanted to stay for longer, which is always the sign of a good holiday if you ask me!

This is my ninth year taking part in this linky celebrating childhood, based on a poem by Kahlil Gibran, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” .

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.