New playground

Some of you may remember back to early March, when I said they were digging up the children's playground near my house in order to revamp it. It has taken all this time for the new design to come to fruition but it opened the other day - without, as far as I know, any fanfare - and since then has been very busy and popular, particularly with parents/carers with younger children. Unusually, it has been turfed and then some kind of rubber matting laid over the turf around the swings and slides, through which the grass can grow. There are a few new trees, some colourful seats (seating was almost non-existent before), lots of bright exciting equipment... the most popular appears to be a circular net that swings....and a tarmac area for ball games - just out of my picture.

Overall it is an improvement, much more cheerful looking and it certainly seems well-used. But there are large signs forbidding entry to anyone over 14 who is not supervising a younger child. That means the youths who used to play football on the old playground are no longer allowed to, and all those young students from the local college who used to come and cuddle on the one seat (!) have been left out. (And I can't go and sit there either!) Not sure what the ban is meant to achieve - any paedophile need only stand on the other side of the perimeter fence! And the older ones used to play at different times from the little ones. I don't suppose a few signs will stop the teenagers though!

(Oh and by the way, I did buy the print of the old playground, mentioned in my earlier post.)