Down at the Gade Avenue car park end of Cassiobury Park, you’ll find the new paddling pools. Opened in July, they sit just above the large playground and below Daisy’s in the Park cafe. Not knowing what the old ones were like, as we moved to Watford after they’d closed for refurbishment, we can safely say the new ones are a big hit with our toddler!
Here are a few pics of the site – we hope you get a chance to go!
There are quite a few changing rooms underneath the cafe and a few toilets. There’s one baby change in the disabled loo. At the moment, there is one sail shade and one parasol, which aren’t enough on a really sunny day and you have to be the first person there or the first in the queue to get the sail shade! We understand the council are ordering 10 more parasols to offer a bit more cover on sunny days, not that we’ll need them in 2017 anymore – we’ve had our week of summer sun, it’s basically autumn now.
There are three different paddling pools. One with splash fountains that come on after you stamp on or slam the buttons. This pool is great for toddlers as they can run around and the water isn’t deep at all. The other two pools are more like traditional paddling pools where the water is a bit deeper.
There’s plenty to keep the kids entertained. As well as the splash fountain pool, there are fountains dotted around the rest of the park, which are fun to run through.
The two times we’ve been so far, we’ve arrived at 10am and were among the first people there, which worked well as on our first visit, when it was quite sunny and warm, it got busy really quickly. Car parking can be a bit of a nightmare as well!
We can’t wait for a weekend day when the weather forecast is set fair for the whole day so we can take a picnic and spend the whole day in the park visiting the paddling pools, going on the miniature train, playing in the playground and then catching some live music at the bandstand. It’s basically the dream we had when we looked round the house we live in now and walked past the closed paddling pools!