Lotmead Farm is situated in Swindon, Wiltshire. Established in the 1950s as a traditional dairy farm, it opened a pick-your-own in the mid 1980’s. The award winning PYO attracts thousands of families each year providing a range of activities and themed events.
The farm offers seasonal fruit and vegetables, a café and farm shop, children play area, small animal enclosure, dairy parlour and a nature trail with a bird hide. Looking to enhance its visitor attraction the farm approached Greenspan Projects Ltd to help them create a bespoke play trail for families to enjoy alongside the PYO. The Farm owner wanted to make the most of the relatively narrow space available to draw people from one end of the field to the other. Greenspan’s creative team developed the concept to encapsulate the story of the strawberry thief, enticing children along the trail to discover who the strawberry thief is!
In-keeping with the farm surroundings and brand, the rustic, timber play trail offers varying degrees of challenge to engage both younger and older children. Old farm tools and props can be found along the way, adding interest to the trail at varying heights and elevations to achieve a more immersive experience. Hand-crafted timber strawberries embellish the trail, some with munches taken out of them to add to the intrigue…who is the strawberry thief?!
Above: Concept to completion – Early concept designs and themed trail items.
Storytelling signage encourages children along the trail where they will encounter a range of climbing features from rustic wooden crates, stepping posts, and wonky ladders, to climbing ropes and nets. Children can even hop across some quirky jam-filled sprung buckets!
The play trail was created on a relatively low budget, highlighting the benefits of bespoke design and build in terms of developing a unique, quality attraction to fit a particular space.
Greenspan’s creative design and build team enjoyed bringing the bespoke, fully themed play trail to life. It’s proving to be a very popular attraction with the farm visitors.
Take a look at the photo gallery below:
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A bespoke, themed play trail offers great play value and can be designed to fit into any space making it a great addition to any visitor attraction. Thinking about a play trail for your attraction? Why not get in touch?
