Holiday cottage in eco-friendly family resort near the beach

Leave the main road to the Baie de Somme to find your red-cedar hut on a hillside at the Domaine du Val in Grands-Laviers. Each sleeps six people in two full bedrooms and with an extra sofa-bed in the lliving room. You’re in the very heart of nature, immersed in the fresh air that does children such a world of good.

These little stilted lodges are lined up across the hillside looking right out over the valley and Grand-Laviers golf course below. The views are quite simply bewitching. After a football match with friends or running around after the wild rabbits, families head to the Club House or to the Clos Robinson, an enclosed garden with a stilted house and willow tipis for Wild West games, a reading bench, cool grass for siestas and a picnic table for supper. Everything has been thought of – even Plan Bs for when it rains!
Stop off at the organic kitchen garden to pick a few vegetables and discover your green fingers or your cooking skills, then meet Perlette the Domain’s donkey (she loves a good stroke!) and new residents, hens Catcat and Cotcot.

After a peaceful night’s sleep, head for the wide open skies of the calming Baie de Somme (15 minutes away by car) for open-air activities: cycling on an array of safe bike routes, easy-peasy sand-yachting on vast open beaches, family catamaran trips to see seals, pony rides in the sand dunes or horse-and-carriage rides out to the famous seafood beds where mussels grow on bouchots, tranquil walks through the Marquenterre bird reserve or in Grands-Laviers right next to your cabin.

And then gentler pursuits, including browsing local markets on Thursday and Saturday mornings in Abbeville and Sunday mornings on the quayside in medieval Saint-Valery (followed by window-shopping on rue Ferté). Fill your basket with local products to cook in your wooden cabin or when you get back to the UK… You’re living the dream!