When guests in the cottages ask what to do with children on an afternoon that is neither beach nor museum, this is the answer. Forest Adventure is an aerial adventure park in the abbey forest at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, 25 minutes from the château (16 km, through Valognes or across the bocage): nine tree-top courses with a continuous lifeline, from a toddler course at two years old to a black course that ends with three big ziplines, 280 metres of cable in all. It is run by a small local team, it is never crowded, and it stays open in the rain — only thunder or a gale closes it.
Courses and prices
The passes are cumulative and unlimited for the afternoon. White, from age two, €5. Yellow, from about five years and 1.10 m, €10. Yellow and green, from 1.30 m (about seven), €20. Everything up to blue and violet, from 1.40 m (about ten), €30 — the blue is the family course. The whole park including red and black, from 1.60 m, €35; the black is where the Tarzan jump is, a swing on a liana into a net. Children of two to nine need an adult on the ground and a signed parental form; adults who want to follow a child round the yellow or green buy a cheaper accompanying pass. Gloves are useful and are sold at reception, not lent.
The Speed-Roll
The park’s one extravagance: a 420-metre spinning zipline, 20 metres up, that circles the forest in a hang-glider harness. Solo from 60 kg, tandem from 1.40 m, so a parent can take a ten-year-old. The price is not on the website — ask at reception or when you book.
When and how
Open from the Easter holidays to 1 November: every afternoon in the French school holidays (1:30 pm to 6 pm, last entry 5 pm), Wednesdays and weekends in term time, and every day in July and August from 10 am to 8 pm. Closed from 2 November to early February. Booking is strongly recommended, essential in summer: online, or by phone on +33 2 33 52 57 42. There is a picnic area with tables and a snack corner for drinks, ice creams and waffles. Website · directions.
Next door
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte is worth the detour on its own. The medieval castle at the top of the town — a fourteenth-century keep and curtain walls, twice besieged in the Hundred Years’ War, with a picnic lawn and a view over the Douve valley — is a good place to recover; guided tours run in summer through the Cotentin tourist office. Below it is the abbey, rebuilt in the nineteenth century as the mother house of an order founded here, and in a farm on the edge of town Lait Douceur de Normandie makes confiture de lait, the Norman milk jam, with a tea room open weekday afternoons from April to November. That is the whole afternoon: trees until four, castle and milk jam until six, dinner back near the château.
Prices and opening dates are the 2026 ones published by the park; last checked 7 October 2026. The 2027 calendar was not yet published.
Stay at the château
Make the château your base for this and everything else in the guide: four B&B rooms from €95 a night, four self-catering cottages from €100 a night, 35 minutes from the Cherbourg ferry. Best rate when you book direct.