Adventure Trail in Roundhay Park

It’s been on my radar a while that the Friends of Roundhay Park had created some free childrens trails around the Park, so with a sunny day forecast, we decided to give one a try!

Specialist-gardens

Routes: Downloads are available here. Clue sheets and information are also available from The Mansion, Lakeside and Tropical World. We just did the trail for pre-schoolers. It’s free to do, but if you’ve enjoyed it there’s a suggested donation.

Accessibility: All buggy friendly!

Facilities: Oooooh Roundhay Park has everything you might need, with cafes at Tropical world and Lakeside, the Mansion Restaurant, Toilets, Play areas, and two pubs on the outskirts (the Roundhay Fox and The White House).

The Magical Fountains of Roundhay Trail (pre-schoolers)

There are three quests in this trail, so this could be done all at once or split up if you’re a regular visitor to the park.
The First Quest on this trail was around the water features in the gardens of Tropical World and the Specialist Garden, which was really great because I feel these are parts of a Roundhay Park that we visit really infrequently. In yesterday’s sunshine they were absolutely spectacular!

Roundhay-Park-trail
Marking off another feature in the Specialist Garden

This quest is pretty easy for children to grasp; all they had to do was to spot the features in the pictures on the sheet, but they definitely will need help on some of these which look slightly different. For example in the Tropical World garden, one of the features had no water flowing so it was difficult to convince Jess that was what was in the picture! This quest was only 1km long, so we walked from the Specialist Garden to the Upper Lake along Mansion Lane for the start of Quest 2.

Tropical-world

The concept of Quest two is that the magic’s been lost from the Fountain, and we’d have to find the magic creatures around the lake to help them get the magic back. I wasn’t sure that Jess would get the concept as much for this, but actually she really enjoyed it!

Upper-lake-trail

The first task was chanting- and we must have repeated it about 57463386864 times until she felt the ‘Stumpsters’ had heard us! We continued along the side of this beautiful lake to get to the next task, where you need to count the empty Lily Pads attached to the railings. It was a shame to see some had been stolen, but temporary signs are in place so you can still complete it!

Trail-roundhay-park

The third task is more chanting and a stomp across the bridge, again, once was just not enough for Jess! The fourth task can actually be done from this side of the Lake too, so if you are continuing onto Quest Three you could cut up the path. If you do Quest 2 in solo, from the Mansion House a circular path around the Lake is just over 1km.

The-bridge-at-upper-lake
‘Stomping’ over the Upper Bridge Lake

The sun was so hot yesterday that we retreated to some shade for a snack in the shade instead of completing Quest 3. But this could easily be joined onto the first two Quests, leading down to the playground at Lakeside. This one needs simple counting and identifying numbers, so probably more aimed at 3-4 year olds.

Roundhay-park

It was really nice to do something a bit different at Roundhay Park, it’s somewhere we come a lot and tend to stick to the same areas! There is a trail for the older children here, that includes a Quest round the larger Waterloo Lake too!

You might also enjoy discovering the Secret Gorge Walk here, or other adventure and story trails here.

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