Puy du Fou with your group

Puy du Fou España is 40 minutes from the estate, right next to Toledo, not the 30 you sometimes see advertised: it's about 60 km by road, and it's worth knowing before planning the day. What makes the drive worthwhile is what you find at Finca La Simona: a whole house for the group, with six en-suite bedrooms, instead of one hotel room for four and another for the rest.

Large groups with children who don't fit into a single park hotel room without splitting into two or three. Here you all sleep together, have dinner at the same table before or after the show, and the next day you have the pool or the countryside to recover from the park.

Puy du Fou's official partner hotels, all within 25 minutes of the park, publish rates of between €68 and €175 per person and night. At Finca La Simona, a group of 12 pays €50 per person and night at the weekend (€45 on weekdays), with the whole house, your own kitchen if you want to use it, and a pool the next day. It takes 15 minutes longer to reach the park; you pay quite a bit less to sleep, and you sleep together instead of split up.

If you're not watching the clock, skip the fast road and take the CM-4001 local road, a lovely drive through olive groves and the Tagus valley. It passes through La Puebla de Montalbán and, halfway along, it's worth the detour to the Barrancas de Burujón, a small Grand Canyon above the Castrejón reservoir that looks its best at sunset, so it fits better on the way back from the park on days without the night show. Ten minutes from the estate, Malpica de Tajo castle is the natural first stop on the route. With the detours, allow a good hour instead of 40 minutes.

Booking early matters here more than for a regular weekend: park capacity and show tickets sell out around Easter, in summer and around Christmas, exactly when large families plan their Puy du Fou trip. Fixing your estate dates and your ticket dates together, rather than one after the other, avoids ending up with tickets for a day the house is already booked.