AS we climbed aboard the bright pink boat and chugged through a leafy tunnel
to the Scary Lake, we could already feel the magic of the fantasy world that
is Bewilderwood. Perhaps it was the trees in the forest on the Norfolk
Broads whispering around us, maybe it was the promise of strange folk going
by the names of Boggles and Twiggles. Then again, it could have been Mildred
the Crocklebog, whose green spiky form emerged from the lake waters to spit
playfully at us.
Marketed as a Curious Treehouse Adventure, Bewilderwood offers the imaginative
much more than the zip wires, jungle bridges, tree houses and crazy slides
that fill it. It’s an enchanted kind of place where you’d expect to find
Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree, or at the very least, some of the
characters from Lord of the Rings milling around.
That is a feeling owner Tom Blofeld, who says his inspiration came from a
computer game, is keen to encourage. “The idea is that you get on the jetty
and you are immersed in a different world, only blinking when you get back
to your car,” says Blofeld. “Halfway through creating Bewilderwood, I
realised the woods were populated. Of course, I grew up here so I already
knew about the Boggles and the Twiggles.”
Dressed in a green suit and leaning on a cane, Blofeld is as charmingly
eccentric as he sounds, and has put a lot of himself into his creation, also
writing the children’s book “A Boggle at Bewilderwood” to explain the
different activities parts of the theme park.
Read the book and you’ll understand why, for instance, there’s a tree with a
whole shoeshop full of footwear hanging from it, but it’s by no means
essential reading to enjoy the woodland adventure playground.
We - three adults and four children, ranging from 18 months to 11 years -
climbed up wooden steps, slid down poles, crossed bridges linking two trees,
explored tree houses and took the fast route back to earth again on slides.
We couldn’t get enough of the Slippery Slope - a wide slide capable of taking
three abreast down its 70ft length alongside a vertical-drop slide. We’d
been on longer, faster, more bumpy slides than these, but coupled with the
treehouse idea, these just seemed particularly good.
We found our way through the maze, a late addition to the park; Blofeld
dismissed the idea as boring until he realised that he could add interest
with a ‘prize’ in the form of a slide out of the maze. Then we found our way
to the Snack Shack for lunch, which was basically a choice between burgers
or sandwiches, though it was all good, simple and organic where possible.
Then it was back for more fun. Everything was well thought out, with rope
bridges wide enough for the wimpish, and a perch on the zip wire, not unlike
a ski button lift, allowing you to whizz through the trees in comfort. It
was good, clean, old fashioned fun that made the most of nature, from the
benches scattered around the park carved from fallen trees to the branches
used to make dens in the undergrowth.
Even the signs around the park are fun - the colourful one at the main
entrance points in four directions: this way, the wrong way, get lost, and
the sky.
Not that you really need signs to find your way around, or the beautifully
drawn map that’s handed out to visitors at the park entrance. As Blofeld
says, Bewilderwood is very much a “boutique theme park”, with just a handful
of attractions that are good for a couple of hours but probably don’t make
up a day-long experience. Although the woods cover about 50 acres, the
adventure park is set in less than a third of that area, making it pretty
compact.
Which means it could get overcrowded on peak days; the 400 or so people there
when we visited was a good amount, with very little queueing, but on a busy
day, Bewilderwood is expected to receive 2,000 daily visitors.
It’s not somewhere that many will travel to from London, but for Norfolk
residents, or holidaymakers to the Broads, it’s a great place for family
fun. Later, if Blofeld gets his wish to build more theme parks in the UK, as
well as a Bewilderwood hotel in the woods, with rooms in the treetops, many
more of us will get the opportunity to find out about the Boggles and the
Twiggles.
Details: Tickets to Bewilderwood
cost £10 for adults and children over the age of three. Family tickets for
two adults and up to four children £45.
