Posts Tagged ‘baby friendly’

The Christmas Adventure

{ December 20, 2010 @ 11:00 am } · { Culture, Family, Yorkshire places }
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This weekend we braved minus degrees of cold to visit the Christmas Adventure at Stockeld Park, near Wetherby. It’s a place we stumbled across a couple of years ago on the search for a Christmas tree, and realised it is so much more than that. I have been excited for months about the idea of taking Millie there this year and absorbing some of the Christmassyness!

Basically it’s a large stately home type place, with extensive grounds. Every year, from October to January it’s open for seasonal activities that appeal to adults and kids alike. At the moment you can enjoy: nordic skiing, ice skating, the snowflake maze or walking through the enchanted forest. There’s also a cafe, a big wheel and Christmas shop. It’s quite a serious operation with thousands of visitors, so has a theme park style ticketing office next to the car park where you pay for your combination of activities as you arrive. It was busy, but efficient and we only queued for about 5 mins. From there on, the size of the site seemed to absorb the crowds… except for maybe if you wanted to visit the cafe…

We went there specifically for the enchanted forest walk at dusk, hoping that it would be interesting for our 1 year old darling daughter. It is about 1km walk through mature woods which are beautifully illuminated with fairy lights and various fantasy and fairytale characters. Each point of interest was indicated by a plaque and a movement activated audio piece about it. Rapunzel sang, ogres groaned, wolves howled and birds tweeted as you wound your way through trees, over bridges and around a lake. There were also interactive sections where you could do things like press buttons on the side of a toadstool house to reveal a surprise, or play a tune on some outdoor chimes.

Some people might say that this kind of attraction could be too tacky, too overcrowded or expensive. That wasn’t our experience on this visit, we really enjoyed it. Millie was quite interested in the characters and lights and it was all pushchair or wheelchair friendly. I think it was definitely worth the £7.50 adult entry fee (children under 2 are free) and it was just over an hour’s entertainment for us. However, I can see that if you have a bigger family, or want to do more than one activity it could get a bit pricey.

Anyway, for us it was a little bit of Christmas magic and I would highly recommend it, particularly for the beautiful lake scene. Only 5 more sleeps ’til Christmas!!

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Slug & Lettuce lunch

{ January 9, 2010 @ 12:48 am } · { Bars & Restaurants }
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The Slug & Lettuce in Leeds always seems to be busy. It definitely gets the after work crowd, but I was surprised to see it seems to have a good slice of the lunchtime shoppers too. We decided to give it a try on a Saturday lunch and see what the fuss was about.

Firstly, we were lucky to get a table! at 1pm ish it was full of couples, friends and plenty of families with children. It was waiter service (which surprised me!) and we were quickly offered menus & drinks. The menu was the usual sort of sanwiches and pub mains, so we chose a BLT with fries and a beef burger.

The food came within 15 mins despite how busy it was. My BLT was lovely, crispy bacon cooked on the chargrill, and a tasty bit of salad & coleslaw garnish. It was about £4, which seemed reasonable. Tom’s burger was much more standard and a bit dry, and not really worth the £7.95 pricetag!

However, for a quick bit of shopper’s lunch it was fine. Speedy service, friendly staff, reasonable food and a lively atmosphere. Also child friendly with good baby change facilities – now becoming an important factor in where we can go!! :-)

Christmassy Cross Keys

{ December 20, 2009 @ 10:51 pm } · { Pubs }
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It’s the first post-baby blog post! Now she’s 3 weeks old we felt we could risk venturing out for a meal with her in tow. Granted we’re a bit more limited to lunchtimes for now, but there’s still plenty of options!

So today it was a festive Sunday lunch at the Cross Keys pub in Leeds. It’s a lovely cosy pub (part of the North bar group) in Holbeck urban village. It has an upmarket menu of local seasonal food and a great choice of beers. Today they even had their wood fire blazing and Christmas decorations festooned from the beams. Out the back is a lovely courtyard for al fresco drinks in the summer.

The Sunday lunch menu was simple – 3 choices for each course and it’s £10, £14 or £17 for 1,2 or 3 courses. We had booked ahead and had asked for a suitable table to park the baby at – I was glad we did as it was very busy!

For starters I had smoked salmon with rye bread which was really rustic and simple. Tom had Gressingham duck pate which was ‘light as a mousse’.

We both then opted for roast beef, which comes thickly sliced and cooked (refreshingly!) medium rare. The roast potatoes, Yorkshire puds, creamy leeks & cabbage were all delightful. Even the gravy was tasty – all of the common pitfalls of mass cooking roast dinners were impressively avoided! We really enjoyed it, even though we did have to do a bit of shift eating to settle the baby!

Even though we were quite full it felt rude to turn down pudding – so we shared the chocolate brownie with caramel ice cream. It was yummy too, and disappeared before I could finish Reading the culture section of the paper!

Overall it combines atmosphere with quality and friendly service. And with a bill of £40 for 3 courses it’s definitely an affordable treat.

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