Cotswolds Water Park
July 2018
Not quite the water park of lazy rivers, wave pools and large water slides you might think of, this is actually a large area, spreading across three counties, that is made up of beautiful countryside and over 150 lakes of varying sizes.
There are a variety of activities you can do, including many water sports like canoeing, kayaking, windsurfing and stand up paddle boarding, plus you don't have to bring your own equipment, you can hire it. More suited to us are the many walking and cycling routes, which vary in length/time to complete and take you through some of the beautiful villages.
We'd downloaded some of the walks beforehand and was planning on doing Walk 1, which had a short version, 45-minute walk, starting from the Gateway Centre, however we'd left our printed copy of the walk in the car, hoping we'd get a better colour leaflet version. We went into the centre, picked up a map of the whole area from the visitor information stand, spoke to a staff member explaining we didn't want a long walk over fields and he suggested the following he canal path and into the village of South Cerney, which sounded like what we wanted and similar to the walk one we had originally looked at.
The route we ended up doing was more than 45 minutes, turns out we started off going left as he had suggested, but to follow walk 1, we should have gone right and although it took us along the Thames and Severn Canal, what we didn't realise was the canal was pretty much abandoned, dried up and nature had taken over.
We spent most of the walk going through a tree lined rough path, that we assume once used to be the canal towpath, through South Cerney village and back along another tree/bush lined path, only getting glimpses of lakes in the distance. You can see photos of the route below, along with a map showing the route we actually took, it's not a route I’d particularly recommend, as it's not scenic enough for the effort put in.
Once back at the Gateway Centre, we decided to stop for a drink and my wife had seen the Muddy Ducks Cafe when we first parked up, so we went there. They had literally just opened for business the day we went, so they weren't able to do all the options they would be doing long term, however they were doing some items and drinks. Obviously we can't comment on the food, but the view from their balcony was beautiful, looking out over one of the lakes.
Not quite the water park of lazy rivers, wave pools and large water slides you might think of, this is actually a large area, spreading across three counties, that is made up of beautiful countryside and over 150 lakes of varying sizes.
There are a variety of activities you can do, including many water sports like canoeing, kayaking, windsurfing and stand up paddle boarding, plus you don't have to bring your own equipment, you can hire it. More suited to us are the many walking and cycling routes, which vary in length/time to complete and take you through some of the beautiful villages.
We'd downloaded some of the walks beforehand and was planning on doing Walk 1, which had a short version, 45-minute walk, starting from the Gateway Centre, however we'd left our printed copy of the walk in the car, hoping we'd get a better colour leaflet version. We went into the centre, picked up a map of the whole area from the visitor information stand, spoke to a staff member explaining we didn't want a long walk over fields and he suggested the following he canal path and into the village of South Cerney, which sounded like what we wanted and similar to the walk one we had originally looked at.
The route we ended up doing was more than 45 minutes, turns out we started off going left as he had suggested, but to follow walk 1, we should have gone right and although it took us along the Thames and Severn Canal, what we didn't realise was the canal was pretty much abandoned, dried up and nature had taken over.
We spent most of the walk going through a tree lined rough path, that we assume once used to be the canal towpath, through South Cerney village and back along another tree/bush lined path, only getting glimpses of lakes in the distance. You can see photos of the route below, along with a map showing the route we actually took, it's not a route I’d particularly recommend, as it's not scenic enough for the effort put in.
Once back at the Gateway Centre, we decided to stop for a drink and my wife had seen the Muddy Ducks Cafe when we first parked up, so we went there. They had literally just opened for business the day we went, so they weren't able to do all the options they would be doing long term, however they were doing some items and drinks. Obviously we can't comment on the food, but the view from their balcony was beautiful, looking out over one of the lakes.
