Going on holiday to a resort just twenty minutes up the road from my house is total anathema to me. Even worse is spending quite a lot of money to do it yet, despite my protestations that Spain would be cheaper and sunnier, last week we packed the car up until the suspension rested on the bump stops and travelled the 14.7 miles from our front door to the Center Parcs site in Elveden where my wife assured me we would have a peaceful and relaxing break from the pub.

Certainly, Center Parcs Elveden - like all Center Parcs establishments - is set in a peaceful and tranquil forest location but, unless you think I am completely stupid, I knew that I was only a short drive from home. And sanity. The first clue to my location was that on Wednesday the temperature was a tropical zero degrees Celsius, as it was at home, whilst in Cape Town it was thirty degrees. Then there was the rain which, on Thursday, it did in quite torrential style. Malaga, meanwhile, was bone dry but I'll grant that Brunei Darussalam did suffer some thunder storms on the same day but that was needed to break up the humid 32 degrees C they were enduring.

It was understandable, then, that I headed to my holiday destination with a mixture of trepidation and dread.

Checking in is a breeze but you cannot get to your lodge before 3pm and the access roads are closed to cars before this time to allow the cleaning crews to wipe up after the preceding residents. You can, however, arrive at any time, park your car and go and enjoy the amenities until your accommodation is ready. As I could natter and ramble my way through all the facilities it's probably easier to break the site down in to the bits you're really going to use, so forgive this slight break in the tradition of my normal writing style as I sub-chapter the rest of this review lest I mutter on too long and forget what I was talking about.

There are four Center Parcs locations in the UK, sited at Sherwood Forest, Longleat Forest, Whinfell Forest and the one we stayed at, Elveden Forest. Surrounded by natural woodland, the site has plenty of walkways and cycle paths that meander from your accommodation through the woods and up to the main 'Village', where all your entertainment and culinary needs can be satisfied.

You are allowed to drive your car to the lodge on the day you arrive to unload and the day you depart to load it, but at all other times cars are banned from the site in order to allow your little cherubs to rattle around on their pushbikes safe from the fumes of the internal combustion engine and, as arrivals and departures only happen on Mondays and Fridays, the place is pretty quiet and peaceful. Even the Center Parcs maintenance vehicles are battery powered, which means you don't hear them until they've run you over.

There are varying types - and therefore varying costs - of accommodation open to you and the cheapest way to enjoy this holiday is to book into a larger lodge with a group of friends or another family. We stayed in a Woodland Lodge, which provided us with three good-sized bedrooms, a bathroom suite, a separate toilet, a living room complete with LCD TV and DVD Player and an LCD TV in the master bedroom, and a well equipped kitchen that included a dishwasher.

Unfortunately, as animal carcass has not been used in the construction of these buildings, Elveden's proximity to the nearby air base does mean that you will be woken at 7a.m. each morning by a jet fighter lighting its after burner in the corner of your bedroom and Center Parcs' brochures do tend to play heavily on the tranquil surroundings and quite blatantly forget to mention that the Americans do like to fly overhead quite frequently from early in the morning.

** Center Parcs Village **

The main attraction of the village - indeed, of Center Parcs itself - is the swimming pool, which can be found in the main sports plaza. A huge complex of pools for the young, pools for the old and pools for the masochistically insane, the Subtropical Swimming Paradise provides for just about everybody's bathing needs except for those who inexplicably just want to swim laps.

The changing rooms are large and spacious with plenty of showers and changing facilities for everybody and there's even an electric drying unit if you'd rather carry a pound in to the pool rather than your towel. Essentially, these look like two telepods invented by Jeff Goldblum in the film The Fly and appear to work by taking all the water on the top half of your body and blowing it on to the bottom. Honestly, they would be more effective if they metamorphosed you in to the body of the person sharing the cubicle with you and I'd highly recommend using a towel instead.

But the heart-attack inducing fun doesn't stop there. Outside, there are tennis courts, pony trekking rides, an adventure golf course, mountain biking routes, a watersports lake and a manmade beach.

You'll be pretty hungry - not to mention broke - by the time you've experienced all of these but the village is full of restaurants and diners that you can sample, including well-known high street names such as Cafe Rouge and Bella Italia. Or you can try the Pancake House, which offers fish & chips on a Monday and Friday night.

If all this socialising is too much for you then an onsite supermarket - the Parc Market - is available for you to do your grocery shopping without having to head to the nearby Sainsbury's and is equally well-priced. Everything from the day's newspapers to a pint of milk can be purchased in there and, if you're feeling lucky, there's a National Lottery terminal too.