Foxfield District Park, London

Located in north-west London at 2384 Buroak Drive, Foxfield District Park has a playground, three tennis courts, a basketball court and green space for running around.

After we reached our goal of hitting all the splash pads in the city this summer we decided to go to one of the district parks that we have not been to, and the kids were wowed. I think the bar has been raised with Foxfield District Park.

Nor’west Optimist Park

Located at 48 Hawthorn Road in North-west London, Nor’west Optimist Park is super cute and knows how to build a themed playground.

The Treehouse – big playground

Today we took advantage of the reprieve of crazy hot weather and visited a park that doesn’t have a water feature but was a favourite of my kids when we stumbled upon it last year.

Riverbend Park

Welcome to one of London’s newest parks. Riverbend Park is located at 1585 Riverbend Road, in London’s west end (I’ve categorized it as both south-west and North-west as it falls, pretty much, on the north/south divide)

Riverbend Park playground.

This park has a playground with a toddler play structure and one for the bigger kids. There is also a new splash pad, swing set (standard, baby and accessible swings), basketball court, baseball diamond and lots of green space.

Medway Park

Located in North-west London at 1045 Wonderland Road N, Medway Park has a pretty cool playground, a splash pad, skate park, and is located in front of the aquatic centre.

One of the play structures at Medway Park

University Heights Park

Playground at University Heights Park

Tonight, in a desperate attempt to tire out our children so that they might sleep through the night, we decided an after supper trip to a park was in order. So we loaded our herd of children into the van and went to explore University Heights Park.

University Heights Park is located at 290 Trott Drive in North-west London. The park has a wading pool, play equipment, swings and a couple kiddie sized soccer pitches.

An important thing to note, I’m my opinion, is that all the park features are easily visible from one another so, if you have a gaggle of children like I do, you can keep an eye on them all even if they run off in different directions.

Our overall review of this park is “good”. It’s not great, but it is better than some of the small residential parks in the city.

Let’s start with the “good”. This park has a wading pool, and is one of only two city run wading pools that are running in the evenings, allowing you the chance to let the kids cool off, for free, before bedtime. This pool operates Tuesday to Saturday 2:30-7:30.

My oldest enjoying the wading pool.

The thing that makes wading pools so great if you have young kids is that, even at the maximum depth point, it is still shallow enough for a toddler to stand and play, while still being deep enough for the slightly older kids to lie down to “swim” and get thoroughly wet and cooled off. While you always have to practice water safety around any depth pool, at least with a wading pool you don’t have lug around floaties for the kids.

The playground is one large structure with a number of slides and some cute features for the wee ones, including a little hippo, a music feature, and some other house and serving style features underneath the structure. The ground cover around the playground is wood chips (which looked fairly fresh at the time of our visit)

A different angle of the playground, with a few of my kids clamouring away.

Some of the cute playground features for the little ones.

One thing that my kids noted was “missing” from this playground is more things to climb and be a monkey on. I acknowledge that monkey bars and climbing features are not for all kids, but for mine, it’s what can make or break a playground rating. There is a stand alone climbing frame at this playground, but it didn’t present enough of a challenge for my monkeys.

The climbing structure.

Additionally, the park has a swing set, two little league sized soccer pitches with small goal posts, and a community garden which you can rent a plot on from the city.

There are public washrooms at the park however they were not open at the time of our visit (and it’s unclear if they are open at all this summer) so I cannot comment on the state of them.

Now, the not-so-great aspects of this park.

• There is no parking lot, so you will have to park on the street, and there are also no sidewalks on the street so you either have to walk on the road, or across people’s lawns.
• The benches by the wading pool look pretty worn and not the smoothest.
• The ground cover around the swings is sand. While sand ground cover isn’t totally horrible, it’s really not that accessible, plus, sand near water equals mess.

Overall, this is a good park. The play equipment is large and easily manageable by all ages, the wading pool is always a big plus, and, according to another family that was there, it’s not normally that busy, but if you have super adventurous kids who like a challenge then they might feel that there’s something lacking here.

Oakridge Optimist Park, Oakridge Arena, London

Oakridge Optimist Park. Toddler play equipment (foreground), big kid play equipment in back.

Oakridge Optimist Park, located at 835 Valetta St, in North-West London, has a playground, splash pad, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a public pool and arena.

**please note, during summer 2020, the public pool remains closed and the parking lot is set up for a Covid-19 assessment centre which runs Monday to Friday 9-5. During that time you cannot park your car in the lot if you’re visiting the park, so you will have to rely on street parking.