We left the screens at home, and set off for a busy day of fresh air and exercise at Out of Bounds to have a go at some activities we were familiar with, and some that were brand new to us. Nice and easy to find, with a big free car park, everything went very smoothly and we were having a go at our first activity of Ten Pin Bowling within minutes of arrival, even though we had got there a bit early. The indoor facilities are all grouped around a central reception, so it is really easy to pop to the cafe or to the loo, or back to reception if you have any queries, and the Clip 'n Climb is great fun to watch while you are there. I had my most successful game of Ten Pin Bowling ever, meaning that for once I didn't have the lowest score of the four of us. We had a drink and a snack in the cafe after our game of bowling and checked out the lunch menu for later on.
The cafe offers a lot more than you would normally find at a children's activity centre, and serves a good selection of freshly cooked to order lunchtime meals and snacks, a small but expertly chosen selection of homemade sweet treats; Rocky Road, Millionaire Shortbread, Smartie cookie and flapjack, plus flavoured milkshakes, fizzy drinks, ice creams and a choice of decent beers on tap! There is even a buzzer that you take to your table which lets you know when your hot food is ready to collect.
Our second activity of the day was the Adventure Nets which the children very briefly found a bit daunting, as some of it does go quite high, but they quickly found that they were having far too much fun bouncing around and sliding down the slides to worry. The Adventure Nets are not just for kids, grown ups are welcome to bounce too, and you can get some brilliant photos. The session is for an hour and I wondered if they would flag, but they just kept on bouncing and tumbling about with the giant inflatable balls and going down the slides and back up the nets like enthusiastic hamsters, so the hour seemed to pass very quickly.
After lunch in the cafe, during which the children decided they definitely wanted to come back another time to do Adventure Nets again, and to try Clip 'n Climb, we headed back outside to find out how Foot Golf works. You get a score card and a pencil and a different coloured football each and have to head across the car park to the foot / disc golf course. I'm not a football fan and I wasn't sure that Foot Golf was going to appeal, but booting a football really hard across a course is actually great fun and we were all fairly similarly matched in skill, so nobody got cross about being miles behind. I was the one who came the closest to losing my ball in the pond, which pleased the children no end (you have to pay a refundable deposit for the footballs, so it is advisable to keep them out of the pond). There are 9 holes which criss cross the course, some harder and further away than others, and most holes can be achieved in about 3 - 7 goes, so the game lasts just about the right length of time.
Our final activity of the day was Adventure Golf which we had been looking forward to since the morning, as you drive past the course on the way in, so you can see the volcano and the African animals when you arrive. The course is excellent fun, with water obstacles that you are actually supposed to hit the ball into as part of the course, a bridge, a volcano, a well and at one point even a raft that you pull yourself across the water on. The children were pretty tired out by this time, but there were still a few holes-in-one achieved and they said the course was really cool.
The Family Day Ticket is priced at £28 per person for all four of the above activities and feels like really good value for money. We were there from 10.30am and left at 4pm; all of us feeling like we had had plenty of fresh air and good clean fun and exercise.
