I am all for discovering local places to visit, and the next one on our list was Denham Country Park, which is about a 15 minute drive from Slough. This park has the Colne Valley Visitor Centre within it, and there’s lots of streams, woods, grass plus an adventure playground. I took the kids along on Monday and we had a great afternoon of fun.

Denham Country Park

These are the details for the Denham Country Park:

Address: Denham Court Drive, Denham, Uxbridge UB9 5PG

Parking: The car park is on Denham Court Drive – a long and windy country road. There are two car parks, one on the left and one on the right. The one on the right has more spaces. Parking costs £3.70 for 3 hours (£2.70 in off-peak season), and it is open everyday until 7pm.

Toilets: Yes by the cafe/visitor centre, open 11am – 3pm everyday.

Food: There is a cafe that is take-away and you can sit at the picnic tables by the cafe. Open 11am – 3pm everyday. We brought our own food for our picnic on the grass.

Pushchair-friendly: Yes. There are a few gates to get through which might be tricky though.

Playground: Yes

Map

I’ve taken a photo of the Denham Country Park map, that includes a Nature Trail that we did on another day. You can read about that here.

Here I have labelled the places we went to, all within a small walking distance.

Picnic

We arrived at Denham Country Park at lunchtime, so we had our picnic first. There are two areas that are good for a picnic – either the big grassy space in front of the playground, or the grass by the cafe (pictured below) and paddling beach. We went for the latter.

We found a lovely spot in the corner, by the bridge to the woods. It was quite busy by the paddling beach area so we stayed back from there. Children were playing in the water with the wellies on, fishing nets and buckets. Some children were even walking up the stream. Mine had a good time watching them from the bridge.

EDIT: We came back here during the week of the heatwave in mid-August with our buckets and spades, and walked in the cool water. It was lovely. The water was so clear, you could see the pebbles through it, which the kids had fun collected. Next time we’ll come wearing sandals that we can strap to our feet as they kept coming off! It was good fun though!

Roman Well

After our picnic, we walked back past the paddling beach and across the cafe to the other side where there is a big grassy area and the adventure playground. At the entrance to this area is a Roman well. I thought Tyler might find it interesting as he learnt about Romans at school – but he was not! I know it may just look like a hole in the ground, but think about how old those stones are.

Adventure Playground

On to the adventure playground, it is really lovely and fully enclosed. This was the first time I let the kids play in a playground since before lockdown. But I figured, they are going to be back at school in just over a month and mixing with children, so what’s the difference if they start now. And something about it all being wooden and natural made it seem okay? I don’t know. Adults were all social distancing, I can definitely say that. But children were not, as can be expected. I did put hand sanitiser on them regularly.

My kids played on the climbing frames and tunnel slide, and another tunnel. They were so happy, I think they thought they were dreaming as it has been such a long time. There were also swings and a sandpit. A long time was spent here, so I caught up on Pokemon Go to pass the time. There are a LOT of pokestops in Denham Country Park, it’s a good one. Then Tyler was tired first and came to lie down on me, but Lily just kept on playing. I had to drag her away!

I tempted her away by saying she could catch some Pokemon on my phone (after some hand sanitiser was put on). We walked to the other side, crossing two gates and found a totem pole by the overflow car park. This is the start of the Nature Trail, which we will come back to do. This totem pole was carved by the same Nick Garnett who made some of the sculptures on the Burnham Beeches trail.

The kids were pretty exhausted at this point, I think because they are not used to playing in a playground, it’s almost as it their bodies have forgotten! It’s funny how lockdown has changed us. I will have to get them used to being more active before school starts.

All in all, we had a really enjoyable afternoon in the sun. If you can drag your kids away from the adventure playground, there are lots of lovely woodland and waterside walks to do here too. Definitely worth a visit.

Remember to stay safe and practice social distancing. Don’t forget to bring hand sanitiser, and if you do picnic here, please take your litter home.

Sabrina x