Bedgebury Pinetum....

Took a trip to the National Pinetum at Bedgebury (Near Flimwell) on Easter Sunday. I'd heard good things about it so decided to make a family day out of it. Curious mixture of beautiful scenery, especially if you are into conifers, and mountain bikers whizzing and splashing across rough tracks around you. It seems to work though probably because the area is quite large. To give you an idea of the scale of the place, the family cycle track, more or less around the perimeter, is about 13 km. Even if you are not into spruce, larch, and fir trees you cannot fail to be impressed by the huge range of conifers in the heart of the gardens. There's everything from dwarf to mighty Californian Redwoods, in fact they claim to have half of the total mumber of conifer species of the world planted at Bedgebury. The tracks vary from tarmac to very boggy dirt track, but on the whole it's very easy under foot. There are some unexpected things like an enormous log swing which can take around a dozen kids at once, and a large wooden climbing frame. There's a new feature called "Going Ape" which is a sort of Wear 'em Out for adults high up in the trees and involves aerial run ways and other scary things like that; but you do have to pay £25 extra for that, which did seem a bit steep. In all a great and quite different day out. There's only a £6 car park charge and no entry fee. Give it a try, but take or hire a mountain bike to do it justice. I'm definitely going back in the winter if it looks anything like the pictures on their web site....