THERE was a wire fence around the forests that bordered the Domaine des Hauts de Bruyères Center Parc, hidden deep in the Loire Valley in France. I was told it was to stop the game escaping during the still very active French hunting season. I feared that a similar fence might be used to hold us in the southernmost of France’s two Center Parcs.

But I needn’t have worried — the bounds that kept the thousands of holidaymakers (mainly French but with a soupçon of other nationalities) within the Parc were not physical. It was the lure of pools, restaurants, shops, bars, beauty centres and other attractions that can fill a week-long stay without having to venture far.

As such, the Parc provided an ideal location for what everyone in our family thought of as the final holiday. Final, because within a matter of a few months, Oliver, 22, the eldest of our three sons, would be flying off to live and work in Japan, and Toby, 19, would be starting university. That they had both consented to join us and our youngest son, Josh, 11, was something of a miracle. Center Parcs prides itself on providing holidays for all the family. Would that include a family whose interests encompass everything from new-wave Japanese movies to Malcolm in the Middle? And just where would Mum and Dad fit in? We needn’t have worried. Parc life engendered a family-wide feeling of good nature and tolerance. But then, it could just have been the fresh air.

We’d sampled a British Center Parc some years before so we knew roughly what to expect. A forest landscaped with hills, hummocks, streams and pools — in a manner that makes you think you’ve just discovered Rupert Bear’s Nutwood, and lots of cleverly designed cabins.

Indoors they provide comfortable accommodation. But the beauty’s in the location. You never see another cabin from your windows, so as far as you’re concerned it’s you and nature. One morning a peacock tapped on the patio windows with a proprietorial air; it was like having a front-row seat at a BBC nature programme.

Had it been January and cold and raining outside, the Parc’s heated indoor swimming pool would have been wonderful, but in summer was so hot and humid that most people made straight for the much smaller outside pool. So unless you were an early bird or blessed with slightly Teutonic leanings, getting a sun lounger proved difficult. Still, people don’t go to the pool to swim. They go to enjoy the slides — of which there were many. Sliding, rather than swimming, thus became an almost full-day occupation for our sons.

Evidence that we were in France rather than, say, Suffolk, came with the superb coffee you could buy near the pool and a regrettable tendency for French men to think that they look their best in Speedos.

I don’t think I’ve ridden a bike with such regularity, purpose and enjoyment since I gave up my paper round at 16. For a start it’s safe — all cars are banned. Other activities include a slightly lacklustre ten-pin bowling complex in the cavernous depths of the “Experience Factory” — where you also play squash, and go trampolining — and tennis courts, floodlit at night. Oliver took part in the outdoor assault course, a fearsome-looking collection of swivelling logs, aerial rope bridges and other high-wire atrocities set some nine metres above the ground.

We didn’t go out at night, but sampled one of the four restaurants. The one we kept returning to because it was cheerful and reasonably cheap was the Italian il Giardino. On our last night we splashed out and sampled the posh French food on offer at Le Safran. It was rather more pricey, but after all, we were in France.

Need to know

Getting there: John Clarke and his family travelled with Center Parcs (01623 837097, www.centerparcs. com) and Brittany Ferries (0870 5360360, www.brittanyferries.co.uk)

Center Parcs has villas at Les Hauts de Bruyères, sleeping four people, from £880 for a week in August. The Portsmouth to Caen ferry crossing, for two adults and two children with car, costs from £440.

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