The Little Big One is loving imaginative play at the moment so it was a real joy to let her loose at Mini Town Play over in Wincanton recently. The indoor play area is fab for feeding little imaginations and is designed to look like a mini high street. It has everything – a greengrocers, a hair salon, a toy shop, a boutique shop with plenty of fun dress up options to suit every taste, a police station, a vets and a fire station. The greengrocers was a big hit for us – both girls spent an inordinate amount of time playing with the child-size shopping basket and trolley! The toys are all great quality and, rather impressively, super clean too, which is a real bonus as, as we all know, this isn’t always the case. This is probably helped by the fact that between each play session there’s a half an hour gap, allowing the staff time for a quick tidy up. They run three play sessions every day, each lasting 90 minutes – which to my surprise went really quickly – at 9am, 11am and 1pm. And it’s super reasonable! It’s just £2.95 for children age 1 – 6+ (this includes free entry for 1 adult). Babies and pre-walkers are free and any additional adults cost just £1.50.

Mini Town Play is based at Cale Park Kitchen – a brilliant little cafe serving great value, tasty food. We ordered a couple of paninis (£6 each), a kid’s Bento box (£3.95) and a child’s egg and soldiers (£2.50). You can eat in the cafe downstairs or order your food to be brought up to the Mini Town area upstairs (we wanted to maximise our playing time so did the full 90 minutes of play at 11am and ate lunch in the cafe afterwards). If you’re just after a snack, they do cakes and small bites too and, if you have very little ones, there’s a great little extra playroom downstairs that has a lovely selection of baby and toddler toys and some comfy seats; just perfect for having a coffee and a sit down while your baby enjoys some tummy time or a little play.

Another great thing about this place is the fabulous park just around the corner. As well as all the usual attractions, it has a train, a couple of mechanical sand diggers and a giant slide with room for the whole family (yes, we tried it) or multiple children at a time! The park is surfaced with sand so it’s soft underfoot and perfect in summer (in wet weather though, you might want to have wellies to hand). There are a number of picnic benches dotted around so I’d definitely suggest doing that on a sunny day.

Booking is advised for Mini Town play as space is limited (they only let a few people in at a time) and it can be done very easily online: https://www.caleparkkitchen.co.uk/ We’ll be going back soon, for sure!