Eco-friendly Family Holiday in Terres de France – Le Domaine du Moulin Neuf

Our last summer holiday, which we booked fairly last minute, took us to Normandy and Bretagne having never actually visited that part of France. It’s quite an easy drive for most families from England, especially if you live in the South East like us, taking the ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg where we stayed for a night then next day we drove down to Brittany and to our destination: Le Domaine du Moulin Neuf, which is a fairly newly built, family friendly chalet village very near to the amazingly picturesque Rochefort-en-Terre. We feel we made a very good choice picking this hotel so I wanted to share it with you.

Le Domaine du Moulin Neuf is located near some beautiful beaches and stunning medieval villages and towns all within an hour’s drive. The holiday village itself is very pretty, the chalets are looking a little basic, but the area is wonderful: a large pond with bicycle route around it, a small beach by the pond and surrounded what it looks like a natural park (but it’s not). There are all sorts of leisure activities available: two playgrounds, heated pool (From May till September), pétanque court, tennis court, water sports and even children’s club (we did not try this).

Our cabin was located with a view over the lake. Each cabin looks identical: has a living area, a double bedroom and a smaller bedroom with 2 single beds. It has a small shower cabin, a separated toilet and a well equipped kitchen (refrigerator, ceramic hob, extractor hood, oven grill, microwave, dishwasher, coffee maker, kettle, crockery and kitchen utensils – but no toaster, which is odd, so I used a pan over the hob to make a toast). It looks pretty minimalist and others may say it’s a bit bare and cold, but we thought actually, that it was ok. Everything was spotlessly clean. We had to pay for the sheets (you’ve got the choice of bringing your own linen and towels or rent), which we didn’t know about, so it’s an extra 30-odd euros. You also have to pay 5 EUR for using the laundry machine (communal and they are huge machines, so half of our stuff went in once and that was it for a week!), but it’s great to have access to laundry service. Another things you’ll need to buy is dishwasher tablets, washing up stuff and sponges, because they don’t provide these. Wi-fi is free and you get as many codes at the reception as you want but the reception is not great though.

We had a lovely terrace where we ate our dinners. So, we cooked almost every evening and used the communal barbecue stations too – it was pretty relaxing, especially that we had an awful restaurant experience on our first day of holiday in St Malo (Bobcat had a meltdown and we’ve got literally kicked out of a créperie) so we didn’t want to go out for meals. The holiday village has a restaurant and breakfast service but we didn’t try these. 

We tried most of the children friendly facilities too: the pool area was really nice. There’s a paddling pool for the little ones and a bigger pool. We used the playground every day of course (every morning and every evening) and played tennis too! We had the children’s bicycles and they liked going for a little ride within the village, but we also took them for a big walk around the lake. They got pretty tired by the end of it as it took us about an hour and a half (including chasing butterflies).

We did quite big walks and day trips to the nearby beaches and villages every day, so I’d say this is a great place to stay if you like to discover the local area too. This part of France is amazingly beautiful and rich in cultural heritage. We didn’t spend a whole day in the village but even half a day is perfect for a fantastic walk around the pond and try the all the facilities. It’s very peaceful around here, good if you want an active holiday and still feel recharged after. 

So even though we didn’t try everything we still did a lot and this place is great for children. We spotted bigger ones just playing outside on their own, building bivouacs and enjoying nature play which is so important for kids in my view.

And look they even do compost and all the garbage goes into selective bins, which is pretty outstanding I thought: