Alice Holt and The Gruffalo’s Child Trail

Dear Mummy, it’s our second attempt at visiting the Gruffalo’s Child Trail event, organised by the Forestry Commission. It’s been happening up and down the country since Autumn 2014. This time we visited Alice Holt Forest in Farnham, Surrey as opposed to our last trip to Moors Valley in Dorset.

The Gruffalo’s Child Trail has been on since October and ends this month. We love the Gruffalo books, so any opportunity to see the characters is a must! It’s a cold grey January day and we head out with NCT friends on our mini expedition into the woods. It’s a pay and display car park so Daddy puts all his loose change in the car park machine when we arrive. So make sure you bring pennies with you!

Alice Holt’s visitor centre and cafe are newer than Moors Valley and serve a better range of hot food at reasonable prices. A lot of the seating is outside but covered which is cold but dry.

We only wait 15 minutes for our hot soup and walk out of the cafe with ready heated sausage rolls and Cornish pasties.

We have a leisurely lunch then head down the wide pathways. It’s less muddy than Moors Valley and there are more sculptures like the giant wooden owl, the wooden tunnels, and characters from the Gruffalo hiding in the woods..which keeps us all amused.

The nice thing about Alice Holt is that they have a huge wooden play area with a large pirate ship! They also have a wooden choo-choo train, little cottages and climbing frames. It’s awesome and we spend a good hour here playing and before we know it’s getting dark and time to go home. (we didn’t take any photos as we were all busy playing!!)

Even though I was teething and a bit grumpy we had a great afternoon in the fresh air and we will be back in the warmer weather 🙂 A great free outdoor space!

Love Bella x