Family Days Out: Ribby Hall Village

Ribby Hall is a large holiday village located in Wrea Green. The swimming pool is within the leisure centre, which is open 8am-9pm, seven days a week.

I’m a mummy to a one year old little girl ‘mouse’ and since hearing everyone rave about how great Ribby Hall is I decided to take her there for a morning swim (or splash about in her case).

The changing area for the pool is spacious and clean.  It has good sized family cubicles with flip down changing mats and play pens for smaller children. There are plenty of lockers and there is room to leave a pushchair if need be. The swimming pool consists of a large pool with two slides and a tipping bucket water feature.  There are also two jacuzzis and an adult-only swimming lane. There is a smaller baby/toddler pool which is lovely and warm to keep teeny tiny bodies from turning blue too quickly. It also has plenty of foam toys, little boats and watering cans to keep them thoroughly entertained, as well as a small slide. There were numerous lifeguards on duty around the pool and the whole area was kept very clean. Ribby operates a swimming supervision policy of one adult to one child under four or two under seven which could make it difficult if you have two toddlers/twins/octuplets.

Outside the pool is a Starbucks, as well as a Papa Johns pizza place, if you fancy a spot of caffeine (it’s how I function) or lunch.  Both have highchairs so little one was able to make an adequate mess and have a quick cookie-throwing practice.

The soft play area which opens at 11am, has a ball pool, slide, maze, small football and basketball courts and a baby area stocked with plenty of toys.  Again, this was very clean and had plenty of seats so I could relax (yeah right!) and watch all the cherubs at play. The soft play area is on the smaller side but has everything kids need to burn off some energy.

Outside the centre are separate playgrounds on which toddlers/infants and juniors/dads can scramble around.

To sum it up, I found Ribby to be a great little morning out: nice and clean, child friendly and not horrendously expensive. Plus, it wore Mouse out enough for me to get two hours’ Jeremy Kyle viewing when we got home. What more could a mummy want?

Ribby also does pretty cool children’s activities during the weekends and holidays.  Information can be found on their website.