We had a lovely day out in the run up to Christmas at Rand Farm Park for their special ‘Christmas Experience’. I took two of my children and it cost £82 for the three of us. This included access to everything else at the farm such as the soft play and all the animals including milking demonstrations, tractor rides, and being able to be hands on bottle feeding calves and stroking small animals. We started with the soft play which is a good size and has some fun elements. I was glad to get a good quality coffee from the cafe to drink while they played! It has an under four section for those with little ones. After this we had some lunch in the Tea Room. The kids had a boxed lunch of sandwiches yoghurt etc and I had a wrap. I realised while we were here that there is an area indoors where you can eat your own food which I would have brought to save money if I’d known.

We just had time to visit the small animals for the animal handling session. They have rabbits and guinea pigs for you to stroke. They are well trained and tame and seem to enjoy being stroked – very cute. My children loved this. We then went to our ‘Christmas Experience’ for which we had a time slot with promise of returning to the animals later! It started with waiting in an area with Christmas trees and lights and some fun glasses for the kids. The sessions in different areas lasted around 10 minutes with different elves doing different activities. One involved learning a dance routine with an elf, one was in the post room finding different coloured presents, one was making our own reindeer food, etc. It was really well organised, a lot of fun and the elves were very good.

Towards the end of this experience, we queued up and met with Santa. He was brilliant and knew all about where we’d be spending Christmas and that they had a brother who hadn’t been able to make it. We enjoyed meeting him. He gave us a token to exchange for a toy. My youngest knew what he wanted immediately, my daughter took a little while to choose. There was a good selection of toys. They were given change of a gold chocolate coin by the elf at the till which I thought was a lovely touch. Then we came out into the outside where it was snowing foam which was fun.

After this, the next activity was decorating gingerbread people with Mrs Claus. The whole experience took over an hour. Since they both accidentally dropped their gingerbread, I bought us some marshmallows to toast and chocolate sauce which they liked. Following this, it was more soft play, petting the small animals, feeding the lambs and bottle feeding the calves. A gorgeous day, we loved it.