Sunday, June 7, 2009

Bright Angel Park Playground- Cowichan Vally


You can find Bright Angel Provincial Park on the Koksilah Road between Cobble Hill and Duncan. Drive as far as you can get into the park and you'll reach a parking area where there are picnic facilities, washrooms, a suspension bridge and oddly enough, a playground. It's a far cry from the playgrounds that we normally review......well.....for a start it's a far cry from anywhere. But there is a lovely quality about a forest clearing, shafts of sun leaking through the leafy ceiling, soft pad of packed dirt and woodchips under feet and the primal screaming of thirty teenagers playing on the equipment.

Sadly enough, I couldn't get good pictures of anything here except for the climbing frame above. The equipment is pretty old but I wouldn't expect anything else somewhere like here. There is a crazy set of old-school wooden and metal seesaws- four of them in a row joined together. There are six swings, two toddler and the rest big kid and a funny thing about the toddler swings is that they are hung so low that 'A' might of climbed in himself if he hadn't been clinging to us in fear of the teenagers. Because they are so low, they actually have the capacity to swing really high- that's if you don't mind bending down to push them.

There is also....drum roll...a roundabout- which I just found out is called a merry-go-round in Canada (I'm British originally) which sort of negates my entire naming of this site- but I guess it's far too late to change that now. The roundabout is an old metal thing and kept us entertained for a while watching the teenagers spin each other round faster and faster until someone flew off and limped off.

There is a lot to explore in Bright Angel Park and though the playground will never be famed for it's innovative and shiny equipment, I am sure any child would have a lot of fun here.

1 comment:

  1. If you go across the car park and down the steps towards the water, there is a great "ride" for kids and grown ups... a suspension bridge! How cool is that? It has some great sway, but also has nice rails to hang on to. It bridges over the beautiful Koksilah river, to a nice little walk on the far side (outhouses over that side too).

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