Every time we visit my parents, we drive past Legoland in Windsor. And, every time we drive past Legoland, Eve and I tell each other that we should visit it one of these days.

This year, on the way back from seeing my parents for Christmas, we did. The theme park itself is closed at this time of year but, seeing as we were only staying for a single night and the hotel itself offers plenty of activities, we thought we would risk it.

Everything was awesome.

I don’t think I have ever seen a hotel more or better geared for kids than the Legoland hotel. Everywhere you go, there are puzzles, activities, entertainments (I can heartily recommend the magic show) and bricks. Thousands upon thousands of Lego bricks in huge brick pits, everywhere. These are bricks with which anyone can dive in and start building and really do encourage the sort of limitless creativity that Lego, at its best, can provide.

The entertainment starts in the evening and, while you could spend the entire day playing with Lego, we didn’t. Instead we went for a post-breakfast swim in the hotel pool which, rather wonderfully, is 1.2 metres from end to end. There is no deep end and, in our case, all three boys could stop and put their feet on the ground regardless of where in the pool they found themselves. You wouldn’t believe how relaxing it is to know this.

After lunch we left and, two hours later, turned up at the ferry terminal relaxed, happy and planning our next trip. This will probably involve the theme park.