Raglan Farm Park – A Family Day Out Near The Old Vicarage

📍 Raglan, Monmouthshire
🚗 Around 40 minutes from The Old Vicarage
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Particularly good for younger children
🌧️ Plenty of indoor activities for wet days
🎟️ Check current admission prices before visiting

A couple of weeks ago we spent a few days at The Old Vicarage and were looking for somewhere suitable to meet up with my brother. Between us we have three children aged between three and six, so we decided to give Raglan Farm Park a try.

It's about a 40-minute drive from The Old Vicarage, making it an easy day trip if you're staying with us and looking for something to keep the children entertained.

A farm that has diversified

At first glance, you can immediately see that Raglan Farm Park is a working farm that has diversified into offering a whole range of activities for children.

We've been to places where it's sometimes difficult to see that there was ever a farm there, with purpose-built soft play centres and attractions taking over. That wasn't really the case here. Much of the attraction has been fitted into the existing farm buildings, which gives it a much more authentic feel.

The farm park itself is family-run and has grown considerably since opening to the public in 2016. There is a mixture of indoor and outdoor activities, meaning it works reasonably well whatever the weather.

Plenty to keep the children busy

There is a good range of animals to see, including traditional farm animals alongside some slightly more unusual residents such as llamas and alpacas.

But, with three children between three and six, it was probably the activities that really held their attention!

We spent quite a bit of time inside on the large inflatables. These are fitted into the barns and kept the children entertained for a good hour. I particularly liked the large tractor-themed inflatable — it seemed very appropriate for a farm park.

Outside, we went on the tractor and trailer ride around the grounds. It's a fairly simple trip around the fields rather than a major attraction, but it was a relaxing way to spend 15 minutes — and at £1 each when we visited, it was something of a bargain!

We then moved on to trampolining, zip-lining and tractor pedalling, which gave the children plenty more opportunities to burn off some energy.

The farm park's own website currently describes a wide range of outdoor activities including zip wires, trampolines, slides, ride-on tractors and go-karts, alongside its indoor play areas.

Reasonable prices

One of the things that particularly surprised us was the price.

When we visited, admission was £8 for adults and £7 for children, with under-twos free.

For a family day out, we thought that was very reasonable. You can certainly pay considerably more for some of the larger children's attractions, so it was nice to find somewhere where you didn't feel that the cost of admission was going to dominate the day.

Lunch at the farm

We also stopped for lunch, which was provided by Girly Girls.

I went for the Cheese Stack, essentially a cheeseburger, which was good quality and very reasonably priced at £5.50 when we visited.

There is also a vending machine selling fresh milk by the pint — something we've become rather partial to over the last year!

On the way out we had a look around the farm shop and came away with some black pudding and a couple of other bits and pieces. So, as well as tiring out the children, we managed to take a little bit of the farm home with us.

Our verdict

All in all, we had a really enjoyable and very friendly visit.

Raglan Farm Park perhaps doesn't have quite the bells and whistles of some of the much larger family attractions, but that's actually part of what we liked about it. It still feels like a farm that has developed its offering rather than an attraction that happens to have a few animals.

For children of our three-to-six age range, there was more than enough to keep them occupied for several hours, and the combination of animals, indoor play and outdoor activities means there's plenty to do.

We'd definitely recommend it to families staying at The Old Vicarage who are looking for a relatively easy day out.

And at around 40 minutes from the house, it's an easy addition to a family holiday in the Golden Valley.

Autumn in The Golden Valley

Every year, I try to get out to The Old Vicarage a couple of times with my family — to visit Granny, enjoy everything the area has to offer, and check how the house is looking (while spotting a few new ideas for how to make it even better!).

This past week, we were lucky enough to spend a few days there and were completely blown away by the Autumn colours. I’ve always thought Autumn is an underrated season, but walking around the garden this time, we really appreciated the thought my parents put in years ago when they planted the trees and shrubs. They didn’t just plant at random — they designed the garden so that every corner offers something different. And now, all these years later, we’re reaping the rewards.

The trees are glowing with reds, golds and ambers, and this year the garden is absolutely full of fruit. The apple trees are so heavy they can barely hold their branches up, and the ground beneath the old oak is covered in acorns. Apparently, this is what’s known as a “mast year” — when trees produce a bumper crop of nuts and seeds. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s worth looking up!

If you’re thinking about an autumn break, it’s such a magical time to visit the Golden Valley. The walks, the colours, the cosy evenings by the log burner — it’s a season that truly shows The Old Vicarage at its best.

Gwatkin’s Cider – A True Taste of the Golden Valley

We’ve always had a soft spot for Gwatkin’s Cider. Denis and Eric, who now run the place, were a little older than us at school, and back then it was just a working farm. Over the years, they’ve transformed it into one of Herefordshire’s best-loved cider and perry producers — still proudly local, still family-run, and still producing cider that tastes worlds apart from anything mass-produced.

You might have seen them pop up at festivals across the country (or even when James May and Oz Clarke paid them a visit for their TV show), but their home is right here in the Golden Valley. A visit to the farm is well worth it if you’re staying with us: you can sample their award-winning cider and perry, soak up the atmosphere, and even enjoy one of the events they host on site.

Coming up soon is their Bonfire Night on 31st October, which is always a brilliant evening of cider, fire, and live music. Throughout the year, they also run “Down on the Farm” and various other events — always a great way to experience local flavour and community spirit.

And don’t miss their Red Cow Restaurant, which has become a favourite of ours whenever we’re back. Great food, welcoming atmosphere — we’ve never been disappointed.

We always recommend our guests pop in if they’re looking for something authentic, local, and delicious. For us, Gwatkin’s Cider is part of what makes the Golden Valley so special.

The Old Vicarage - Looking back

As people often do at the start of a new year, I was recently considering our journey at the Old Vicarage and how we have challenged ourselves to keep evolving and offereing even better experiences for our guests.

The following are some of my highlights (NB Plans for 2025 to come in the next blog!)

2017 - 17th March saw our first guest Mrs Smith arriving for a weekend stay. A few months later we added what has since become one of our most popular features, our hot tub!

2018 - We had a slight setback where a burst pipe means that we had to close for 3 months and completely replace the brand new kitchen we had installed a year before. All covered by insurance but a painful experience. On the positive side, we added a beautiful wooden sauna that doesnt just warm you up but I think aesthetically looks stunning under the old oak tree - what do you think? To keep the kids happy we added a large climbing frame. Far grander than the old metal one we had in place 40 years ago!

2019 - Following on the theme from the climbing frame, we realised that a large percentage of our guests were families with kids so we added some more entertainment - a full size table tennis table and table football

2020 - The year of COVID. Everything a bit on hold but we did make the most of the facilities as both my family and my brother’s family spent the majority of 2020 living here. One of the things we did was to plant a load of trees in the field as part of our plan to create a more bio-diverse environment

2021 - A bit of a post COVID holding pattern but one thing we did do which may not sound exciting was to properly insulate the area between the stairs and the cellar. Now, our stairs is a thing of beauty but we used to get serious drafts coming through. It was amazing what difference this made.

2022 - Following on the exciting theme of drafts, we took the decision this year to replace the open fire in the lounge with a log burner. This was slightly painful as the open fire brought back many happy memories of sitting down with our parents toasting bread and watching something like rugby special on tele but the reality was that it didnt add much warmth when being used, when not being used, all the heat would go up the chimney and it was also a slight concern from a H&S perspective. Again, the difference it made to the room was amazing - much warmer, even without the fire being on and now much more children friendly.

2023 - So, a bit of an option for the future here but we have a large outbuilding that needed some TLC so we tidied up the roof, redid the floor and put in a new stairs. Not sure what we are going to use it for but if you have any bright ideas, please shout!

2024 - Our parents had put in 2 ensuites when they did B&B back in the 80s/90s and, if we’re honest, they were a bit small and the showers weren’t great but they were good enough but last year we decided we needed to upgrade them so we expanded both of them to make them more appropriate for today’s needs and also add new rain showers. Having tested them both out, I am definitely glad that we made the change - a much better showering experience!

Still on the back burner - cycling nirvana

So, we have had the plan for a while to run cycling holidays from the Old Vicarage and even went as far as creating a website for it but life, Covid and then kids has put everything on hold. If you are interested in cycling though, there really is so much you can do in the area so pop on over and check out our website. One day, we might get around to formaly running holidays but, until then, book ot the house and just go riding. We are more than happy to offer advice on routes or anything else bike related….

https://www.britishalps.co.uk/

Trees for good

This year we decided to plant some trees, so any new guests may notice about five hundred of them in our field next to the house. The Woodland trust helped supply them and managed to get a wide selection of native varieties. We’ve called it Murph’s wood after our late father, as shown by the very hand made sign!

trees2.jpg
trees.jpg

As well as looking nice our trees should on average remove about five tonnes of CO2 a year from the atmosphere. We estimate the house emits just over three tonnes of CO2 a year, making us a better than neutral business.

But that’s not a fair and realistic comparison, cleaners, gardeners and guests are driving to the house each week, and we estimate that creates about six tonnes of CO2. So for us a truer goal is to offset around about nine tonnes of CO2 each year. Based on that we will be looking to do some more planting in the next season!