Fort Lucan is a great outdoor centre which has plenty of activities to keep the kids occupied. We have a Spanish student residing with us for four weeks and every Sunday is family day, so we bring her on an outing to different places. A friend of mine had given me a golden ticket that admits one child free and as soon as we arrived, the kids were off on their little adventure.  As you enter the fort, there are mini trampolines into your left and a junior area with a small climbing frame and the maximum age is 5.  Entrance fee is €10.50 per child and adults are €4 each with tea and coffee.  This also includes access to the go-karts as well as crazy golf and one free go on the green slide.  If that is not enough, especially the older children, you can purchase an unlimited access ticket for €7.50 each and they can have as many rides as they like on all slides.

Fort Lucan is outdoors, but there is an area with picnic tables beside the coffee shop that is covered. However the day was lovely and we had three hours of blissful happiness and I got a chance to have a coffee with our picnic and read a few pages of the latest novel.  Just beyond the coffee shop, is forty foot towers and high walkways as well as aerial runways.  There is a huge slide where the kids come down at great speed.  The go-karts are manual, so there is a bit of effort into working them properly, no easy way out.  Good exercise for those little legs.  For all those young golf lovers there is crazy golf, they can play it all day if they like.  A helmet is worn to protect the person, just in case a golf club goes askew and hits somebody on the head.  As I was watching the green slide, patiently waiting with my video camera, for the kids to make their descent, nerves started to get the better of me, however I seemed to be the only one that was a bit shocked by the sheer drop of the slide and the horizontal position of it, but it did not phase anybody else.  One ride was enough for my younger child, but the older one had no problems repeating this activity.  Beside the green slide was the raging river ones, blue and red, the blue is a tube and the red is an open slide where two people can go down in a raft.  Make sure to bring swimsuits, towels and definitely a change of clothes, don’t make the mistake that we did a few years ago and not bringing anything with us and of course Aoife got soaked and had to dry off her clothes with the hand dryers.

For more information log onto www.fortlucan.com