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Oh yeah, this is why I became a dad. A day out at
Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park. It’s a very specific one day pay off for a lot of time, effort and money, but I knew I’d be able to come here if I had a child and I was proven right. I guess I could have come on my own without a child, but it would have looked a bit weird.
This place is like Jurassic Park. If Jurassic Park, instead of cloning dinosaurs, had instead, chosen the easier option of making some out of plastic and then putting animatronics in some of them. It’s not quite as realistic, but the chances of the dinosaurs escaping and eating all the customers is greatly reduced. In places the park seemed a bit runs down and rusty and is the kind of place that I can imagine one day in the future might have an incident where a wolf or lion escapes and mauls a child or a sea lion pulls a child into the water (happened elsewhere today, but not in Combe Martin) but the slight danger is part of the fun. Annoyingly the electricity in the soft play area had gone down and it wasn’t open when we arrived (though we were told it might be later and we weren’t offered any kind of discount for the disappointment), but it was still a fun day out. We went on a train ride, which ended up at a waterfall with models of cartoonish munchkin cavemen, alongside dinosaurs (not sure how well researched this exhibit was). One of the cavemen clearly had the head of a female shop window dummy which was much too big for its small frame. But if you’re going to put dinosaurs alongside cavemen then why not make one of them a giant headed woman in make up? But the ride came with a surprise when (SPOILER ALERT) the waterfall suddenly exploded and a tsunami of water came crashing towards us. It was thrilling and unexpected and somehow stopped short of really hitting us. It’s just how I like my tourist attractions, slightly crap and patched together, but then with unexpected thrills.
The slightly out of place “Pharaoh’s Tomb†seemed to be a mismatch of high concept and not inconsiderable expense and effort to build combined with mildly disappointing content. There was some too complicated task involving solving codes, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. But at least we got to hear from a cross-eyed talking mummy head who didn’t seem all that au fait with the facts about Egyptian burials.
As we were preparing to leave we saw the soft play area was finally open (though the electricity not yet restored) and Phoebe and I had an exhilarating half an hour crawling down tubes, squeezing through gaps and zooming down slides. It was quite a work out and a bit hard on my achy old knees. But man alive. Worth having a kid just for this. I am not joking. Soft play is the best fun you can have with no shoes on. Yet if you turn up without a child and start clambering around on there then you are going to get into all kinds of trouble. So have a child. It's easy. Then all this could be yours.
