If you are regular reader of my blog, you will know that we visit Moors Valley fairly regularly as it has a fantastic playtrail, children’s parks, picnic area and much much more, which you can read about here.
Moors Valley launched their new activity – The Gruffalo Trail on 16th June which will run until 16th September 2012 and what better way could we spend Fathers Day?
Simply pick up a card at the Information Centre (£2 each) and away you go. The card has 19 questions or activities to do as you go round the trail and when you finish you can check the answers and get a sticker. You also get the opportunity to get entered into a draw to win Gruffalo goodies! We decided to get just one card as Isaac is too young to write the answers in his own.
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| Can you spot a Gruffalo? |
Spotting the first of the questions, the boys were off. Each question / activity is set into a log which I think is a really lovely idea and perfect for a woodland walk.
The woodland walk is also completely separate from the playtrail, so there are no distractions and you see a completely different part of the Moors Valley than you normally would.
Some of the tasks involved were answering questions from the book, finding items that were the same colour as snake, fox, mouse etc as well as more complex tasks such as finding out which pine cones had been nibbled by a squirrel or pecked at by a bird. We even had to build mouse his very own house!
It was fantastically spread out, but not too far for little legs! As the weather had been so atrocious in previous days, we did have to dodge some rather spectacular puddles and Isaac managed to launch himself into a water filled ditch in his attempt to beat his brother to the next question. Luckily Mummy was prepared with a change of clothes!
One of the questions even had us adults stumped, when asking which animals hibernated from the story. I am chuffed to say I was correct and didn’t gloat much at all *ahem*.
It really is a wonderful day out. The Gruffalo trail took us about two hours and then we visited the park afterwards, but if you are feeling energetic you could do the play trail too.
Upon finishing the Gruffalo Trail, we checked our answers and the boys were rewarded with stickers for their efforts and entered into the prize draw. We even got to see if we were as big as a Gruffalo!
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| Isaac has a long way to go until he is a big as a Gruffalo |
It really is a fab day out and inexpensive too – my only recommendation is that you read The Gruffalo book before you go to refresh your memory of the story!
This looks great! If only we lived closer….
I’ll definitely keep it in mind if we holiday in the area in future.
It’s well worth it!!
Are you a season ticket holder? My only criticism of moors valley is the cost of parking but will definitely check out the gruffalo trail. Are there places for pregnant ladies to sit down on the trail?
I am a season ticket holder – it was £48 for the year. A full days parking is £7.50 and up to 4 hours was £5 which isn’t too bad considering all the activities.
There was no seating around the trail either so if your taking hubby, get him to carry a picnic chair for you lol
This is such a cool idea – I wish the local squirrel woods by us did something like this! x
Show them my post and plant the idea!! Lol
I love the look of this, what a perfect Country Kids post. Thank you for linking up and sharing all your lovely photos. I wonder if we could create a Gruffalo trail at Coombe Mill? Adding it to a very long list of things I would like to see here!
What a fantastic idea! I wish we had something like that near us, it’s a great idea and really reasonable too. Gorgeous photos x
This looks like so much fun, what a great idea, children would just love this
Love the Gruffalo. Waht a great idea to bring it to life
This looks fantastic, thank you so much for writing about it. If we manage to come down for the Air Fest, we will make it a priority to visit the Gruffalo Trail too as H is obsessed with the book!
That looks like a fantastic outing. It will be a 3 hour drive for us, but it’s definitely in our summer plans. Thanks for your review! 🙂
We love Moors Valley and always pop along when we’re staying at the in laws in the New Forest. Will defo be doing the Grufallo trail next time we go. Great post!