BLACK FOREST FOR FAMILIES

Alpine Coaster A ski school in winter, kids and grownups will love speeding down the slope in the summer (mehliskopf. de/sommer/ bobbahn).

Tree Top Adventure Park Challenge yourself with this course of zip-lines, and treetop adventures. Minimum age six (mehliskopf. de/sommer/ klettergarten).

Badeparadies Schwarzwald Tropical swimming experience in the heart of the Black Forest with 20 slides, a wave pool and plenty for grown-ups too (badeparadiesschwarzwald. de/en).

Lake Titisee Surrounded by woodland, not only is this one of the prettiest spots in the Black Forest, there are also boat trips, hiking and ice skating (blackforesttourism.com).

Karlsruhe Palace Illuminations The city of Karlsruhe is home to a beautiful 18th-century palace with summer illumination shows. Free (schloss lichtspiele.info). The Dutch are not necessarily known for their humour, but one guaranteed way to make them crack a smile is to mention Efteling, the country’s largest theme park, in south-central Holland.

Built around fantasy and storytelling, it’s the sort of place that your grandmother might have designed. Peer through the window of Geppetto’s studio and you’ll see animatronic mice making merry while the master is away; trot down a woodland path to find the next magical scene in the park’s fairy-tale land and you’ll pass a mushroom subtly pumping Mozart onto the proceedings. This soothing soundtrack, along with the fantastic forest landscaping, which gives way to a burst of bulbs on the main thoroughfares, gives Efteling a charming and very Dutch feel.

The attention to detail and plausibility is superb: as we approached a (sadly monolingual) giant storytelling tree, the face of which features a rubbery chin that wobbles like the wattle of a turkey, my four-year-old son whispered: “Is that

Poffertjes These airy small pancakes smothered in butter and icing sugar are the best fairground food in the world.

Gondoletta Tootle around the pretty lake as the flying pavilion soars overhead.

Water-splash roller coaster On a sunny day, cool off on this thriller (minimum height 1.2m).

Holle Bolle Gijs You’ll find these round-mouthed figures – aka the best bins ever – around the park, crying “Paper here!” in Dutch, and your kids will love stuffing rubbish into their mouths. real?” in a voice that betrayed a tiny glimmer of hope.

It is helpful to gain perspective on the 180-acre park, which is divided into four themed worlds, by boarding the old steam engine that rings it, or you might also take a whirl in the flying Thai pavilion, which spins 150ft above the ground and allows views of the entire pleasure garden.

Down on the ground, sprites abound: take a dark ride through a fantasy forest and you’ll see trolls and fairies swinging from three-storeyhigh vines and cavorting in a U-rated Studio 54-style rave in an alarming manner that thrilled my son.

While more than half of the park is taken up with low-key rides that would suit children up to age six or seven, there are also three roller coasters and a flume ride to entertain budding daredevils.

The reliance on tradition and the charm of the old-fashioned is what makes this park an ideal family destination – but it is not without its pitfalls. Two rides, in particular Monsieur Cannibale (a spinning teacups-style affair) and Carnaval Festival (an indoor around-theworld-via-tableaux event), feature racist caricatures of blacks and East Asians which are a sad reminder of Second World War-era cartoons and have no place in an otherwise fantastic park. I hope that Efteling heeds the complaints of many Dutch patrons and updates these rides; I pointed them out to my son and we had a mini-history lesson

as we made our way towards more appealing spaces.

Spread out and with playgrounds dotted around each area, Efteling is a place of simple pleasures: perhaps the greatest for me, beyond the pretty gardens and outstanding pancakes, was the rare break from the omnipresence of characterdriven commerce of the sort you’ll find at Disney or Peppa Pig World. Efteling is not without its shops, but here each classic story – not the brand – is the main focus.

Going to a theme park where English is not the main language also has its pros and cons: the performances are all in Dutch – but you may find, as I did, that this is a merciful escape.

You must stay on site, but skip the kitschy hotel and its themed rooms in favour of the higher-end selfcatering village, Bosrijk, where there’s an indoor swimming pool and modern houses built in a pretty traditional style surround a lake.

Two nights at Bosrijk in a threebedroom self-catering house (sleeps six), with three days’ early park admission, costs from £589 for two adults and two children (efteling.com/en).