Children’s adventure park

[lulu12345]

I would like to buy or rent a very large plot of land and create a children’s adventure park. I’ve harboured this ambition for years and have lots of ideas and background research that I need to pull together in a plan.

The main piece I’m stumbling over is how and where I’d find the land to get started and I wondered whether anyone had any ideas??

In an ideal world I’d also like to find an experienced business partner to do this with, and am wondering how I could get linked up with, say, someone who has run one of these things and would like to go it alone and own their own business?

Grateful for any ideas please.

I recommend you try to visit Sundown Adventure Park (sundownadventureland.co.uk/) A) for market research, and B) because it's an amazing place! If you care to build such a facility in the vicinity of County Durham that would be excellent

In all seriousness, in terms of advice, I'd stay away from Business Link (in my experience, excellent and helping you get grant money, but even better at advising you to spend it with specific freelancers/companies to suit themselves, not to suit your needs). Search for blogs and chatrooms for either specific trades which you would like to link up with if you started a venture (such as accountants) or for startup businesses. They are a goldmine of information and further reading. I'm currently doing likewise with a view to make one of my brainchildren a reality on the future.

This site also very useful for funding:

www.sage.com/en-gb/blog/government-grants-for-small-businesses/

Rightmove has a land/commercial property search option too in terms of looking for a suitable location.

Thanks very much for this Peapod. I certainly will check out Sundown, it looks great. Just been on the website and looks like it’s still owned and run by the same woman who set it up 50 years ago - v impressive and love encouraging stories like this of people who have clearly made it work.

Thanks for all the other tips, I’ll look into these links.

Good luck with your own venture planning. What are you thinking of doing (don’t answer this if you don’t want to!!)

I'm currently a SAHM with baby number 2 due at the end of August. I very much want to go back to work once I feel this baby is ready for nursery (if I wasn't pregnant DS would be starting nursery now and I'd be looking at going back, he'd thrive! But we can't afford nursery fees, and no point trying to find a job at 26 weeks pregnant). I don't want to go back into teaching while they're little if we don't NEED me to, but I still want to do something in my area of interest (my degree is in Early Years) .

I'm looking into training as a Doula, but also at opening up a centre for women who are TTC/Pregnant, or have newborns as a sort of hub for social meet ups, educational sessions and workshops, perhaps a session a week where mobile hairdressers and beauticians attend with a creche session running to watch the little ones for those who want some pamper time, but can't/don't want to leave their little ones with somebody else, birth equipment hire and purchase and whatever else pops into my head between now and then.

It may come to nothing, but it's nice having a research project to pass the pregnancy if nothing else :-)