SKIREBEL Magazine

The long awaited bluestone leisure park has opened in Wales, the facility is due to add the country’s first indoor snow centre, although the timetable for that remains vague. However the park has announced that it will offer tubing on snow this Christmas.

Currently Bluestone contains over 180 hundred log cabins (the figure will eventually almost double) centred around a £10m water park. This features a central wave pool, lazy river ride, three slides and indoor and outdoor spa pools. The facility has been very, very popular since opening and the centre is currently urging people to phone ahead and book, rather than turn up and risk being turned away because the facility is full.

There is also a sports club, with fully-equipped gym, personal trainers and sizeable indoor sports hall for tennis, badminton, football, snooker, pool and volleyball, as well as yoga and aerobic classes.

The facility has been built to high environmental standards and includes a biomass heating system. The Blue Lagoon is thought to be the only water park in the world powered by biomass energy created on site in an energy centre which boasts a £50,000 turf roof.

Two 26-tonne boilers heat water through the carbon-neutral burning of woodchip and miscanthus, or elephant grass, grown by a co-operative of local farmers, Pembrokeshire Bio-Energy. It means a saving in carbon dioxide emissions of 3,000 tonnes a year, and the co-operative says local growing means it is not contributing to deforestation in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil.
Current work on the proposed £25m indoor ski centre is not expected to begin until at least 2009. The main ski run will be 200m long and 50m wide with a 75m training run next to it.

Bluestone expects to attract 250,000 visitors to the Blue Lagoon and a further 100,000 staying visitors each year. The facility aims to employ 700 people and inject £35m annually into the economy of the region, which is an unemployment black spot with European grade one development status.