A Duck Day Out at the Poole

Back at the end of February, we had a day trip which we knew had to start in Gillingham (the one in North Dorset, not the one over in Kent...) and then end up in Bournemouth (where we had tickets to see Russell Howard).

But where to go in the meantime? We packed some leftover pizza from the previous evening (yep, we are that classy), took a flask of tea and thought we'd find somewhere in the direction of Poole.

It's an area of the country which me and Andrew used to visit a lot when we were both kids - my parents would always go shopping in Poole (I loved the charity shops and the train line right through the high street!) and Andrew's always took him to the Chimes to sit on the beach all day in summer.

One place neither of us had been to though - and I have no idea why, with the amount of times we've both driven past it - was Poole Park. It's a Victorian park, first opened in 1890 and looked like a good place to stop with gardens, parking and a cafe. It happened to be quite nice weather, albeit a bit breezy and we drove into it on the off chance there'd be somewhere free to park and eat our tasteful afternoon tea.

What we didn't realise was that the place was full of ducks!

Hundreds of them, mallards (all paired up with their beaky mates at this time of year), lots of Canadian Geese, long-limbed swans, several birds I didn't recognise and millions of seagulls doing their best impressions of a sitting duck. You could buy duck food for a small price which meant that they were all incredibly tame, although I'm not too sure about having a huge flock of geese that close round my legs...

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's a couple of places to eat in the park but the one we popped into was called The Ark, which amazingly not only contained a cafe and a children's play centre but also a real ice rink!

 

 

We stopped and had a slice of cake each and a hot chocolate which was very tasty (the Lemon Cake is definitely recommended). We ran out of time to go ice skating, which was a right shame - as it means we'll just have to go back another day! :-)