This is a great park in The Ponds, set in a pretty location with cool equipment.
The play equipment at this park is bright and fairly large – big slide, big climbing net and big bird’s nest swing! The climbing net is pretty hard core and clearly aimed at the slightly older kids market. And the prize for managing to scale it to the very top is the express way down – an awesome tube slide!
The toddler pondered this structure for a while and though desperate to go on the slide, his little brain did the maths on the climbing net and, thank goodness, he conceded defeat. A slight shame as he would have LOVED the slide. Curse those cunning and clever playground equipment designers!
There’s also a bird’s nest swing. Now, we hear you say ‘big deal, these are a dime a dozen in parks now’. Ah, yes … but not ones like this! We’re not engineers so we’ll use layman’s terms here to describe it – it hangs from a really high height, which means it gets loads of air. (Is this something to do with a fulcrum??). And it swivels, so it can go in a circle or any which way you want it to, rather than just back and forth.
It’s also got a fun spinning bucket/disc type thingo (yes, that’s its technical name), your standard swings and a smaller scale climbing structure with a little slide for sensible toddlers.
Parking is usually fine. Worst case scenario, you might need to park in an adjacent street. It’s partially fenced on the lake side not the road side, so you can’t tune out completely with the little people around. The toilets are a bit of a hike over to the other side of the lake. So, note to toddlers – don’t leave it until the last second to declare you need to do a wee. There’s a shade sail over the toddler equipment but not over other equipment.
There’s the spongy soft-fall stuff on the ground for unsteady toddlers and there are plenty of benches and some shaded seating for adults. There’s no café at the park, so you’d need to be organised and pick that up en route. It’s cute to also watch the variety of birds and water fowl around the area too.
If you do make the journey over to the loos, you’ll see the lovely spacious flat green area with shelters and bbqs. It really adds to the community feel – as we arrived a jumping castle was being erected and a party was obviously about to start. Also, there are some interesting arty structures in the water for grown-ups to contemplate.
Camomile Street, The Ponds.
