Spotlight Saturday

Spotlight on Dinton Pastures Country Park, Wokingham

 

My son and his girlfriend live in Winnersh. Where I hear you ask? Well, Winnersh is basically between Reading and Wokingham – handy if you work at Microsoft as they do (well, Ben has handed in his notice but that is a story for another day!). It takes us about 2 hours to get there so unfortunately we don’t get to visit with them very often. However on Sunday we got our jobs done early and Hugh, Penny and I piled into the car and made the trip to see them!

 

We arrived at lunchtime and Amy had prepared us a lovely lunch. As the weather was so superb (and as we are British and therefore must make the most of good, unseasonal weather!) Ben suggested we go out for a walk and see their local area as we haven’t done that yet and they have lived there for 3 years.

 

Ben suggested we walk to Dinton Pastures – “it’s only a 20 minute walk, not worth taking the car” he said. Thirty five minutes later we arrived! However, I have to say that the walk there was very nice and took us through Winnersh Meadows which was very peaceful, green, had beautiful blossom on the trees and an outdoor gym which of course my family all had to mess about on!

 

Arriving at Dinton Pastures was a little hairy as you have to cross a busy, fast main road to get to it and there is no safe crossing place – something I think the local council needs to remedy if they want people to walk there! The car park is quite large and at the weekends costs £1.50 for up to 4 hours and £6 over 4 hours and you could easily spend a whole day here so actually I think it is pretty good value for money. At the entrance is the Dragonfly Café and toilets. We stopped here immediately and bought icecreams as we were so hot! We also made use of the facilities which were good for public conveniences!

 

 

Then off we went for our walk! We could have walked for hours. Dinton Pastures covers 450 acres of lakes, rivers, meadows and woodland. We walked for about 30 minutes – it was sooo hot! However it is such a lovely place. Ben told us that it is possible to hire boats, pedalos, etc at a reasonable rate – perhaps something we could do another day. There is also the best play park for children that I have EVER seen! I wished that either I was a child or had a child who could enjoy it. It is great too as it is an inclusive play space which has been designed to be non-prescriptive and allow children of all abilities to be able to enjoy it.

 

 We had such a lovely afternoon and I would love to go back with Ben and Amy and perhaps take a picnic and spend the day there. The walk back didn’t seem to take as long lol!  Apart from walking through Winnersh Meadows we also had to walk through a modern (and rather upmarket) housing estate, but it did have this beautiful old house right in the middle of it which I couldn’t resist taking a photo of as I would like to live in it!

 

So thank you Ben and Amy for a lovely afternoon – can’t wait to come and see you again!