As winter rolls on and the days are slowly becoming longer, we thought that you might all find it maybe a little bit interesting if we gave you all a brief update on how things are progressing down here in the winter season at Dorset Adventure Park. We always seem to give you images and updates on our busy summer season but you never get to really hear about our cold wet windy winter season when all of ground works improvements changes and buildings get put in place here down on the Adventure Park.
Rob, Ryan, Mikey and Steve travelled to the Wibit factory in Germany to learn more about repairs and maintenance of all of our kit.
This year we have had to pull up all of the anchors for the equipment on Woodland Lake, this has meant many dives for some of our staff members notably the quietly famous Mikey Sayles who we have introduced to you all previously and the slightly less famous Harrison Blakesley who we haven’t introduced you to yet – have both spent lots of minutes underwater doing and undoing knots and pulling up heavyweights. They were cold but elated when they’d finished!
As you can probably imagine all of the inflatable Wibit equipment is safely stored and packed away off the lakes. We have to take great care when moving and handling all of the very expensive inflatable equipment.
Woodland Lake has had a complete overhaul including being emptied and dredged to make it deeper and less silty. It will have a brand new layout for the new season. Heavy plant equipment is now on site creating and laying down the substrate for brand new paths and new walkways so that you guys can have the best of times and a better experience with Dorset Adventure Park throughout the 2020 season.
New offices and storage facilities that are desperately needed are now being put in place. As I look out the window right now we have busily working away on site a little Hanix H17 D mini digger for those of you that are interested in the detail, a Thwaites 1 tonne dumper truck and a Hitachi Zaxis 130 13 tonne digger. We have also had the big five ton dumper truck on site but as I write this it is having a well earned rest. So far during the winter season the off season that is we have been rather unlucky with the tremendous amount of wet weather that has blessed the United Kingdom over the winter.
For those of you out there that are mudders or at least have an interest in all things mud our very good friend Bruno Charron has been busily working away day after day in his mini digger on the mud trail, we have had to fill in large holes and build up areas around some of the obstacles that have been eroded over the 2019 season. It’s incredible how much mud leaves the trail every season!
The mud is deep and of course the mud trail is very wet. It has been quite difficult for Bruno but he has managed to get his mini digger through some challenging situations. If everything goes to plan we hope to have the up and over walls back in action in 2020 together with the ninja leaps which have proved challenging due to the depth of the mud.
We have a brand-new net squeeze orange and shiny in place on zone C on the Mud Trail. We thought it was best to retire the well used original that everybody has had so much fun from. We have taken the opportunity to partially fill-in some of the deeper mud pools so that some of our younger customers can get filthy too! We’ve got some other improvements to the Mud Trail that you will have to wait a few weeks to see.
Early January saw some quite severe flooding at the Park, completely submerging Zone A of the Mud Trail and Corfe River getting so high that it flooded Woodland Lake. Luckily things have now subsided allowing us to continue with our work.
You’ll be pleased to hear that the Snap Shack will no longer be operated from a tent, instead having its own purpose built hut.
In the next week or so we shall be having interviews with potential members of staff for the 2020 summer season hopefully making new friends and welcoming back old. It will be great to have our 2020 team in place ready to go.
We’ll keep you posted/blogged!
Written by Steve Sabine January 2020
Fantastic, couldn’t believe how much you’d improved the 2019 season obstacles from the 2018 course. Looking forward to the 2020 course with my niece sometime & her crowd as well as challenging it on my own occasionally for a laugh & to keep the cardiovascular aspect, balance & co-ordination and the laundry efforts on track.