Summer holiday means lots of days in the sun to fill with fun activities! With one tiny three year old and two taller seven and nine year olds, finding activities for everyone to enjoy can be a bit of a challenge. We tend to end up doing the same old, same old – but have been making an effort to try new places. After some googling, Ashlyn’s Farm and Softplay came up. At this farm, there is really just so much for everyone to do.
Ashlyn’s Farm is almost like a small area of shops on the outside; a restaurant, butchers, and small store all packed into one, another building which sells locally made wine, and a third where you can get your hair or nails done, or get a massage. Once you’ve walked through this buildings, you’ll find the Farm and Soft Play area a bit behind it. The Soft Play and Farm Trail are very reasonably priced, especially as you can easily loose an entire day here. We opted to first see all of the outdoor stuff. The farm trail has tons of animals you can see and feed (for 50p per bag of feed). Goats were a favorite while we visited, but there were also pigs, chickens, sheep, llamas, alpacas, pygmy horses, and donkeys dotted around. A big reptile and bird building also stands close to the entry, allowing you to take a look at owls, various birds, tiny marmosets, skunks, and a variety of reptiles.
Walking around the massive farm, the kids all seemed to like feeding the goats, who went for the entire bag of feed quite often! In between each area, to make the walking seem shorter, there are three massive play areas. We stopped at each of these, washing the children’s hands, before letting them free on the equipment. The play area towards the front of the path is the smallest one, being a good place for outdoor picnics if you packed a lunch. Otherwise, the mid play area by the water park was a favorite, as it boosted quite the large area with a collection of slides, climbing areas, and toys.
Kai, Amelia, and Robin’s favorite part of the farm trail was the ‘zombie goats’ – we found an area towards the back that were full of goats who clearly didn’t benifit from feeding often and started running towards us when they realized we had food, making noises the entire way. A lot of our day was spent outside with these animals and checking out the different play areas. Once everyone became hungry, we went inside the Ashlyn’s restaurant to see how it was.
As someone who loves food, Ashlyn’s restaurant that boosted healthy food that’s locally sourced was wonderful. I had the jerk chicken kebabs, which came with a salad and wholewheat pitta bread. The food was very, very good – but not so much kid friendly. As everything was locally sourced, the food was pricey and up market. For the five of us, it came to 3x the price of the entire farm and soft play area, including the splash zone. Children also don’t seem to enjoy food as much as I do, so it didn’t really feel worth it. As good as the food was, I would suggest having the kids pack their lunch and just eating there as adults.
Once food was consumed, we moved onto the soft play area within Ashlyn’s Farm. At first, this soft play bit seemed quite small – or well smaller than we expected. I feel that this could have been because of the size of the building, if I am being fair. The area was tall and had a lot of slides and places to climb. The kids easily spent over an hour running around, dipping out to grab sips of water or slushies, which you can buy right in that area. The soft play area does have less seating then the various outdoor play areas, but there still was enough room for the number of people that were there.
Last, we went over to the water pad, which had a mushroom, lots of things spraying water, and sun loungers for the adults watching. The area also had sand boxes if the kids didn’t want to play in the water. Normally, there are 30 minute slots, but these are only enforced if the area was busy and it was not when we went. The kids enjoyed cooling off in the water – the changing rooms there were clean and easy to use, so that was a plus.
They did go back to the best outdoor play area before the end of the day, which allowed me to check out the shop and grab a few little items like farm themed cookies and organic dinosaur pasta before heading back home. All in all, Ashlyn’s Farm is a very fun day out. I enjoyed myself, which sometimes doesn’t happen at kid-focused things. The animals dotted around were great, everything was well maintained, and there are plenty of seating. The kids slept well after a long day of running around and still talk about the Zombie Goats days later.
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!