Review of Weston Park

The school holidays rolled around and we started searching for places to visit as a family. We had been intending to visit Weston Park for a while but until now hadn’t quite made it.

Weston Park

Weston-Under-Lizard

Shifnal

TF11 8LE

http://www.weston-park.com

Park and gardens ticket: adults £7, children aged 4-14 £4.

Weston Park is a huge parkland set around a stately home. We managed to visit on a day when the house was closed and I was a little concerned about how we would occupy ourselves all day long in the gardens. This turned out to be a completely unfounded worry. There was lots to do and in a day we didn’t manage everything! Below are our three highlights of the day.

The Enchanted Glen

This augmented reality trail is new for 2018 and we headed straight for it. I had downloaded a free app onto my phone before arriving. As we discovered each magical home, we used the app to scan a symbol and up popped different creatures. This trail was the highlight of the visit for Little Lady and it encouraged her to walk further in search of the next code to scan.

Woodland Adventure Playground

We spent a lot of time on the playground. There were some more unusual pieces of equipment and plenty things to do. As an adult, I felt that the equipment looked a little tired and worn in places but this did not seem to impact on the many children playing there! We ate our picnic at one of the tables in this area and it seemed many families were doing the same. We supplemented it with a proper coffee from The Granary, which includes a deli and café.

Stuff

We really enjoyed our visit to the ‘Stuff’ room, which is open in school holidays for various craft activities. There was no extra cost to take part, but we did need to book a space in a set time slot at the entrance. This is actually a sensible system to make sure that the room and resources are not overrun. There were a range of crafts to choose from and lots of lovely materials to use.

The gardens were extensive and alongside the above activities we saw a deer park, explored lovely warm greenhouses, tackled a complicated maze and walked around the lake. There was a lot to do and we all headed back to the car with tired legs.

Weston Park has a lot of competition when so much woodland and parkland is free to enter. However, it is fairly priced and has a huge range of things all on one site. My advice would be to take a look at the website and see what’s on for families so you can tie your visit into something special.

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