When: 2007
Where: Centerparcs

For my 18^th birthday I got to go to Centerparcs (Whinfell Forest) with three of my closest mates. We left school early on the Friday (Christ I used to go to school) and my Step mam and dad took us to stay for a long weekend.

I love Centerparcs. As soon as you get out of the car you can feel a difference in the air. I love being surrounded by the trees and the little log cabins are beautiful.

The four of us had our own cabin and were left to our own devices for the whole trip basically. I remember going on random walks. We were studying Robert Frost poetry at the time and we took silly pictures where there were forks in the road. (If you don't have a clue what I'm going on about Google: The Road Not Taken.)

I remember bowling and playing pool. There were arcades and my friend Nic got her picture taken in one of those toy car rides designed for kids. We were just carefree 18-yr-olds. (Well they were all 17. I was the first one with a birthday.) We took stupid photos posing in the park. We took inappropriate ones around signs on the mini gold course. Just looking back at them has me giggling. We weren’t always acting like big kids though.

One day we got to go to the Spa. If you ever go to Centerparcs you can't leave without going to the spa. It is truly amazing. There are various saunas and steam rooms with a couple of pools chucked in for good measure. You can just spend as long as you want flitting between them all and having a good natter with your mates in the process.

For night life, they had a little club, it was more family oriented, but we still managed to have a good time. One night we met some young farmers and played a few games of pool and what not. To this day Farmer’s Weekly still crops up on someone's birthday or for a jokey Christmas present.

At the time I was doing a project for my art class, so tried to get some nature shots whilst we were there. I’m not like I am today when I take fifty pictures of the same bloomin’ tree. I managed to get a couple though. (It's a good job really because I couldn't put half of the photos we took on here, everyone would be mortified.)

They have this thing at Centerparcs called Badger Cam (Well at least they did eight years ago, I'm not sure if they still do) It was basically a channel on the TV that was hooked up to the cameras around the park. It would show you if there was any wildlife about such as badgers. We spent a good few days there trying to just spot one. We joked we would find where the cameras were so we could be on the telly. (How mature)

It was honestly one of the best times. We burnt pizzas, messed up some sausages, dropped jewellery down toilets and posed with tins of spam amongst other things. It was just all about being a teenager, about hanging out with you friends and not caring or worrying about anything. It was about watching A Walk to Remember on repeat and then leaving it in the dvd player by mistake. (Yes I'm talking to you Steph.)

Have any of you been to any of the Centerparcs villages?