Farleigh Mount Country Park, Winchester
Farley Mt Rd Hursley SO21 2
I love Farleigh Mount. It’s another place that I’ve been going too, on and off, for the past 30 years. (EEK! lol).
It’s about 30 minutes drive from Basingstoke, and not so easy to find, so you need directions or a sat nav.
I still haven’t managed to find the monument though. After 30 years of visiting the country park, it’s a must do and looks great for a picnic. Definiately on my list of things to do later this year!
Play
I took Miss NHM this weekend, because the weather was lovely and I knew she needed to run around a bit. We used to park in Crabtree car park, but now I always park at the car park at the end of that road.
Crabtree car park has two fixed BBQ’s which are available for the public to use. There are also picnic benches, so it’s a great place to organise a meet-up as the area is big enough to keep an eye on little ones, but flat enough for them to run around easily.
We park in the car park at the end of the main road. Miss NHM thoroughly enjoyed running down the big hill (but boy did she whine on the way back! lol). If you get to the bottom of the hill and then turn left, you can find the children’s playground. It’s very similar to the Basing Wood playground, but we spent much longer here than at the Basing Wood one, possibly because it’s far more shaded at Farleigh Mount. Miss NHM loved jumping across the stones (with a little assistance) and we spent a long time walking up and down the tree branches.
Miss NHM has never been that big a fan of swings, but she spent ages playing on and around the swings. It helped that we had the play park to ourselves.
We then ventured across to the big triangular structure, which I’d seen before but never explored. We spent about 40 minutes playing in and on the triangular structure. Miss NHM loved climbing on it, even though I was a little bit worried about this!
She also really liked the huge wooden Spider that we spent a lot of time playing on and around.
Farleigh Mount is great for little one’s who have bikes and there are loads of walking routes. We didn’t do any this time as I didn’t have the pushchair with me and I knew Miss NHM wouldn’t be able to walk too far after an hour of being in the play area. When she’s a bit bigger, we will do a lot more exploring!
We then walked back through the “cow pat field”. Part of the hill next to the play park has cows roaming in it. We tried to find them, but no luck, although Miss NHM now knows how to say “cow pat!”
It took ages to motivate Miss NHM to walk up the hill but I then decided we would park up in a car park further along the way and have our picnic there. We ended up having the field to ourselves for over 40 minutes and had an awesome picnic. There were lots of flowers to look at and the field was full of bumblebees and butterflies. One butterfly even landed on Miss NHM’s face, which she wasn’t to happy about!
It really was a lovely day out. I always have a fab time at Farleigh Mount.
Tips
If you don’t like dogs, avoid Farleigh Mount. It’s a dog walkers paradise and there are lots of dogs.
Kelly also mentioned in the comments, to be aware of Ticks.
Food
N/A but there is a Farm Shop very nearby which is open on weekdays and Saturdays and Winchester Waitrose isn’t too far away.
Facilities
N/A apart from the outdoor BBQ facilities
Baby Facilities
None, but in a place like this, you can change them anywhere really.
Parking
Lots of it and all free.
Prices
FREE!
Rating 5 out of 5
