Russell Youll enjoys a thrilling trip back in time at a theme park in western France.

Now, I’m not usually the kind of tourist who seeks out the history of a place in minute detail every time I arrive at a new destination.

That’s just not me. I like to unwind – I just don’t feel the need to know the rich tapestry of an area’s history in order to feel fulfilled on my travels.

A good book, a splash around in the pool with the kids and a nice steak washed down with a cold beer is often all I need to get away from it all for a week or two.

As we boarded our Brittany Ferries ship in Portsmouth, little was I to know that our family holiday to the Vendee in western France was about to prove one of the most memorable French lessons of my life.

Together with my wife Sally and our children Emily and Jamie, I was all set for a fun bucket-and-spade couple of weeks at Siblu’s Le Bois Masson parc in St Jean de Monts, about a four-hour drive from France’s western ferry ports.

I make no apology for admitting I love this kind of holiday. To me, it’s so much easier with children of six and four to load up the car and head to a mobile holiday home in France than to run the gauntlet of package holidays to the likes of Spain, Portugal or Greece, let alone the longer haul destinations.

Why would you coop yourselves up in a hotel room when you could have your own lounge, separate bedrooms and plenty of outside space for the kids to run, play and cycle around in?

No, fresh air and fun wins every time for me and, as we soon found out, Le Bois Masson and the Vendee in general has that in bucket loads. But I knew this was going to be a slightly different holiday experience for us soon after receiving our welcome pack.

A chat with the parc’s representatives and Vendee Tourism soon let us know this was a place packed with stuff to do.

First, they said, you MUST visit Puy du Fou. So we did.

Blimey, what an assault on the senses. A theme park without a single ride, it is more an adventure through 2,000 years of history. And it is truly fantastic, in every sense.

We watched chariot racing Romans, Christians and gladiators in one area of Grand Parc, complete with leopards, lions, elephants and tigers.

In fact, the scenes were so realistic, we had to comfort Emily after seeing a Christian apparently thrown to the lions and another chased down and slain by a gladiator – I’ll leave a little to your imagination here but there was a lot of pretty realistic blood shed.

On the flip side though, four-year-old Jamie was thrilled to see the claret spilled in such a gory fashion.

He barely stopped talking about it for the rest of the holiday. “Did you see the blood, Dad? Brilliant!”

A short walk away, we experienced Vikings pillaging their way through France with a full-size longboat emerging through water and fire before amazingly disappearing back beneath the waves.

Wolves roam the set and you can feel the blast of heat as the invaders set the Gallic village ablaze – just how they manage to have it all back up and running again in time for the next show an hour later is beyond me.

A stop to admire dancing fountains set to music over lunch and we moved on through history and happened upon jousting medieval knights and a castle which spewed fire and somehow managed to slide forward and back to reveal yet more incredible sets and stunning scenes.

Amazing just doesn’t do justice to all that this parc has to offer and that’s without even touching on the musketeers’ performance or the 18th century village and the 1900 town square.

And when the sun goes down, make sure you book a spot at the Cinescenie show.

An incredible light and sound show takes you through 700 years of history with stunning laser shows and some 2,000 actors creating a spectacle the like of which I can guarantee you will never have seen before.

I could go on and on about Puy du Fou, but that would be to neglect the rest of the lessons we learned on this trip.