As fans of the great outdoors, we love nothing more than escaping to blow away a few cobwebs. There are a wide variety of places to choose from in Surrey and the surrounding area with one of the favourites the beautiful Alice Holt forest.
Located near Farnham, Alice Holt is one of many forests managed by the Forestry Commission. Five year old POD particularly enjoys the Habitat Trail with its natural play areas and the Play Wood although more cycling will no doubt be on the agenda as she gets older. Perhaps even horse riding although it’s probably best not to encourage her to add to the animals she already wants. Alice Holt is home to Go Ape which POD has been asking to do since she was about two years old. She’s just reached the right height so we must organise it before our next visit.
What makes the trails at Alice Holt so great is how much there is for children to do. From climbing trees, balancing on logs and jumping streams to hiding in the 3D maze, climbing a woodpecker or scaling a bat. There are often Stickman and The Gruffalo trails to follow as well. POD also loves creating her own treasure hunt for us to follow. This usually involves drawing a map before we leave and listing or drawing things to find along the way. This might include fir cones, bracken and red leaves to the more obscure boy in blue gloves or girl in a red hat.
The Alice Holt Forest has a brand new play area so we set off to check it out. As was the case with our last visit though, we ended up in one of the superb den building areas for quite some time. While many have the bones of them created already, five year old POD took it upon herself to turn it into a home. Having shown her Daddy around, the bag was down and she set to work looking for branches, sticks and bracken.
It didn’t take long to realise we might be around for quite some time so Daddy stepped in to assist POD camouflage her home. She’d not wanted help up to that point although lending a had had an adverse affect in that she began building a new home. So we had two on the go – one Daddy was putting the finishing touches to and one POD was creating herself. We might have been there for several hours had a little girl POD’s age not come along and helped. The two of them chatted as they built out the den and even lined the inside of their house with bracken which served as a carpet. With tree stump chairs already in place, they did a great job of making it as comfortable as they could. Suffice to say we missed checking out the new adventure play area again but does it really matter when you’re busy making a home from sticks?
