Our Day in London – Coram's Fields

We live in Hertfordshire, just a 30 minute train ride from central London but we hardly ever go.  In case you didn’t know I’m from the North (sort of – Lincoln) and Northern people often think of London like some enormous grey polluted place with people pushing and shoving and being generally rude and unfriendly.  My opinion has changed a bit since living closer to it, but it’s still not my idea of heaven so when R suggested us going in to London while he had to do a 1 hour site visit for an event and then go to meet some of the people he works for I was a little bit dubious but figured we could just find somewhere close to his site visit to take Oliver so I wouldn’t have to navigate the tube by myself.  Not quite how it worked out, but we had a fab day!

Our train goes in to Kings Cross and when someone suggested visiting Coram’s Fields I had a little look online and discovered it’s really close – only a 15 minute walk or 1 stop on the tube to Russell Square and then a 5 minute walk.

I have to admit, when we first walked in we were a bit like, “oh…”, because it says it’s set in 7 acres so you’re imagining this HUGE playground but it doesn’t look that big when you walk in.  In reality there are a load of sports pitches and the buildings all around host different things.  There are even some chickens, goats and some other animals, a nursery and a children’s centre.  I can imagine it’s an amazing place for people living in London.  What was fab was that there were different areas for different ages and abilities.  There were sandpits, a paddling pool with a little fountain and a nice cafe that serves food all day as well as the usual suspects; whatsmore you can’t enter unless you have a child with you – R even saw the staff turn away a couple who tried to walk through.

He’d just spotted the swings!

Oliver loves having a go at everything so he literally tried everything, he got a little frustrated with some things, but what’s great is there is always something else to distract with!  In fact at one point Oliver was blowing some very wet raspberries at other kids (they had started it) and I asked him not to, then I told him if he did it again we were going and he did it, so we walked off and went to the toilet then just went to a different section of the park.  He still thought he’d left because he was in a different area of the park.  Next time we are bringing his swimming things and a towel so that he can go in the pool instead of having to avoid it, and a little spade for the sand!  The only issue we really had was that Oliver slipped on the wooden decking area near the sandy slide, but perhaps we should have taken his shoes off?

Oliver assessing his empire

All in all we had a fab day, and we will definitely go back next time we head to London in good weather.  It sounds like a fab charity too and the people who work there must be working hard to keep up a park that has been there since the 1930’s!

And the toilets were clean too!