Hope Nature Centre and Animal Park is a charity run by young people with learning disabilities in Southwick, Wiltshire. The charity was founded in 2000, in May 2006 after six years of fundraising the tea room opened. The following year chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, goats and a pony all found a new home in the nature centre and May 2008 saw the opening of the animal park. The park is now home to may more animals and has approximately 700 visitors a week.
On Sunday Emelia, Oscar and I went along to the park with my mum, and we loved it. We have visited before, but Sunday was a particularly lovely outing.
We had lunch in Squirrels Tea Room, which serves a variety of lovely homemade food, from light lunches to roast lunches, cakes to ice cream. Emelia had a cheese sandwich, mum had a brie and grape baguette and I had homemade quiche and salad which was so yummy (hoping to go back before we fly back to Cyprus just for that quiche)! There's also a small gift shop inside the cafe.
After everyone was fed and watered we wandered outside to the animal park, there is a small fee to get in; £2.50 per adult and £1.50 per child although for 2 adults and 2 children there's a family price of £7. I also bought some food to feed the goats, chickens and rabbits which were 50p a bag and a massive hit with Emelia!
The park has such a lovely atmosphere, it's so spacious and calming that even on a busy day you don't feel like you're tripping over people or having to wait long to for park equipment etc. The walk around the park is lovely, along the way you'll find the different animals as well as lovely adventure play areas with trampolines and even a mini golf course.
The park has recently opened a wooden fairy area where they run story times for children every week. Unfortunately we are going to have to wait until our next trip home to make use of this!
We spent all afternoon wandering around, looking at everything and playing tag and hide and seek, the last thing you come to is the mini golf course which Emelia absolutely loved. It was almost a struggle to get her to leave at the end, but luckily the rain and no proper coat prompted us to have a race to the car!
If you're near Wiltshire I would highly recommend taking a trip over to Hope Nature Centre, rain or shine it's a brilliant place and kids absolutely love it.
xo
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