Wonderful relaxing family holiday at Domaine de Litteau campsite, Normandy

It’s not often that the travelling – usually the stressful bit either end of any holiday – feels like part of the break itself.

But within minutes of driving our car aboard the ferry at Portsmouth to sail to northern France, we were tucking into a cooked breakfast, enjoying a coffee with a view of the blue, and blowing away the cobwebs with a breezy stroll on deck.

It was the perfect start to a relaxing week in Normandy, and when we docked again six hours later in Caen, rested and refreshed from a catnap in our cabin, it was just a short 50 minute drive to our destination.

Our base for the week was a spacious static caravan on the Siblu holiday village of Domaine de Litteau, about 15 minutes from Bayeux.

Tucked away on a quiet cul-de-sac on the former farmhouse campsite, our home had everything we could need and more – three bedrooms, two loos, one fully fitted kitchen with washing machine, and a covered decked veranda for alfresco lunches.

Within an hour of arriving, our seven and five-year-old girls had discovered so much to do on site – a dragon-shaped bouncy castle, a sandy playground with spinning swing, a little shop selling fresh baguettes, even a spot of low-key family entertainment to watch while tucking into takeaway frites.

The next morning we set out to explore the swimming pools – two of them, one with a tunnel slide and toddlers’ shallow section, the other with a fun spray zone for older kids. Sadly a heat wave and drought when we visited meant the sprays and slide weren’t in use to conserve water, but that didn’t dampen our girls’ excitement. They loved just swimming, diving for sinkies, climbing out and jumping back in again, the water warm enough for playing, and both interconnected pools big enough for proper lengths, never too crowded.

You could spend a whole holiday without venturing beyond the campsite. There was a kids’ club which our girls didn’t use but agreed looked fun, a bar, a pizza van and burger kitchen, safe avenues to ride your bike or scooter, a lake for fishing, and plenty of sports courts and playgrounds.

One night a travelling circus pitched its little big top on the main field – a clown, his wife and their daughter. They brought with them their entourage: three dogs that jumped through hoops, two miniature ponies, a goat that trotted on tables, an alpaca that could canter on command… along with the popcorn, candyfloss, and slapstick comedy our girls loved it: simple, charming entertainment that felt like it came from a bygone time.

We settled into a daily routine of swimming in the morning after breakfast, heading home for lunch on our covered terrace, then setting out in the car in the afternoons to explore local towns followed by a meal out in the evening.

The nearest attraction was the beautiful 17th century Chateau de Balleroy, former home of Forbes magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes. He had a passion for hot air balloons, so as well as the castle’s lovely gardens with their crunchy gravel paths, ancient dovecote and box maze, there’s a whole floor dedicated to early aviation and the improbably fascinating history of hot air ballooning.

We visited the pretty harbour town of Port en Bessin more than once, to watch the boats bobbing in the water, get lost in the cobbled streets, shop in the boutiques, and choose from a great selection of pavement cafes serving crepes, pizzas, pasta, and moules mariniere.

We couldn’t drive anywhere out of the campsite without criss-crossing the huge Cerisy Forest, a dense woodland with miles of interconnecting walking and cycling paths like a giant Ecclesall Woods. So one day we headed into the forest rather than out of it, and discovered a medieval village with a huge Norman abbey, neighboured by a mini version of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The Abbaye de Cerisy-la-Foret dates from the time of William the Conqueror, and even served as a model for the building of churches in England after the Norman Conquest.

The Parc des Sculptures is home to dozens of larger-than-life works by international artists, all free to see and run around. Our girls’ favourite was a giant rusted ironwork cat.

In Bayeux we took a stroll around the ancient old town, its timber-framed homes with red geraniums in the window-boxes, and paid a visit to the famous Bayeux Tapestry which – thanks to excellent children’s headsets, explaining the gruesome scenes in accessible audio – even our primary school-aged girls thoroughly enjoyed.

Of course wherever you go in Normandy you cannot escape the long shadow of D-Day, and just outside the old town is the Bayeux War Cemetery, a must-visit on any holiday to the region. The row upon row of 4,000 immaculately kept pristine white headstones, watched over by the spires of breathtaking Bayeux Cathedral, are uniformly beautiful to begin with, crushingly sad by the end. The sheer relentless numbers of them each belongs to a British or Commonwealth serviceman killed in the battles during and after the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.

The quaint seaside town of Arromanches is home to the D-Day Landings Museum, which celebrates its 70th anniversary next year. But even without taking in a museum or actively searching out an exhibition, the memory of D-Day is everywhere in Arromanches. Ice cream shop windows are painted with murals, Union flags flutter from the lampposts, even the beach itself is a perennial memorial to Port Winston, the artificial ‘Mulberry Harbour’ built by the Allies once the landings had been a success. Great hunks of concrete are forever embedded in the sand, fully exposed at low tide, making for a fascinating and sobering reminder of the endeavours that took place on what is now a happy, sunny, family-friendly beach.

On the day we visited a brass band from England was barefoot on the beach playing Abide With Me – and was joined, unplanned, by an English holidaymaker in her bikini who just happened to be an opera singer. She sang the words while the trombone played its haunting tune, as swimmers waded in a sea as warm as bathwater. On a hot day the slowly lapping waves and gently shelving shoreline were safe for our girls who wanted to dip their toe in the adventure of sea-swimming: a relaxing holiday in Normandy the perfect place to do it.

• Charles stayed at Siblu’s Domaine de Litteau holiday village in Normandy, where prices start from £645 for up to six sharing a holiday home for 7 nights in August (https://siblu.co.uk, 020 8610 0186).