By Catherine Sugrue
Travel
My daughter Kate, and I decided to take her three and a half year old son (Max) to Paulton’s Park for a weekend in October. Paulton’s is situated about a twenty-minute drive from Southampton City. There are direct flights from Dublin to Southampton but we booked Aer Lingus from Dublin to Gatwick and took a train from the airport to Southampton. We used Omio for our train bookings and got fares of about €5-10 each way. The train takes two hours. There is a bus service from the station to the Park but it’s infrequent. There are plenty of taxis (£25) and it takes about 20 minutes.
Hotel
There are an assortment of hotels in the surrounding areas- most of which you need a car for. We stayed in The Mortimer Arms which is the only hotel within walking distance from the Park – about a 10-minute walk on a quiet footpath. It’s an ‘Olde Worlde’ pub with about 12 rooms attached. It’s very quaint and the food is excellent. Prices are around £100 per night. It is so convenient if you don’t want to hire a car or rely on taxis! I don’t think they have large family rooms but can accommodate a king bed and roll-out! There are no facilities at the Mortimer Arms other than eating and sleeping but that’s all we planned on doing anyway. We are early to bed people so we’re quite happy to get into bed after we had finished dinner. We booked dinner each night for 6 pm so were back in the room for story time and some YouTubeKids around 7.30 pm. We were all asleep by 8.30-9 pm.
The Park
Paulton’s Park is massive, very clean, and beautifully landscaped. They had Halloween decorations everywhere!! It’s home to Peppa Pig World which has all Peppa-themed rides suitable for young kids. There are many other sections too which are more suitable for older kids – maybe 10 or 11-year-olds! Older thrill seekers should probably look elsewhere.
In October the Park opens at 10 am with the rides starting at 10.30 am. That gives you enough time to prioritize your rides and get in the queue early. To be honest we rarely had to queue for anything longer than 15 minutes and we’re able to just walk onto most rides. Check the opening days though because they reduce the days coming into the winter! At the moment a daily ticket cost is £37.50 with kids under a metre free!
There are plenty of fast food restaurants, toy shops, and clean toilets everywhere! The food is not great and expensive so factor that in! There are lots of playgrounds around and a very impressive indoor soft play zone that our 3-year-old loved!
This is a great park for introducing your young kids to rides and rollercoasters. There are junior coasters that Max loved and were quite scary enough for Nana! There are a couple of more challenging roller coasters which have height and age restrictions but might not be enough to keep the older kids amused for long. In the summer months, they have splash areas for small kids and Halloween and Christmas special events.
Paulton’s Park is a great place for multigenerational families. There are beautiful gardens for the oldies to enjoy if they are not interested in any of the rides. I’d definitely recommend downloading the Paulton’s Park app so you can access the queue times and location of rides and services. Also, there is an accessibility service for children with extra needs which avoids queuing. I’m not sure how it works but noticed people using it!
You can hire strollers in the Park but I’d recommend bringing your own. People just leave the buggies by all the rides and it seems very safe. Bear in mind that the entrance to the ride is not the same as the exit and we often went off to another ride and had to retrace our steps having forgotten to pick up the buggy!
