Folly Farm Review Featuring Nant-Y-Ffin
Folly Farm opened as a tourist attraction back in 1988 with a mission to educate and entertain. It’s a family run farm and to this day the whole family are still heavily involved in the running of the business on a daily basis.
Folly Farm very kindly gave us tickets to visit them. We decided to make a weekend of it and also booked an overnight stay in a local family run hotel (more on the hotel to follow below as I couldn’t write this review without giving them a mention).
We live in Cardiff so set off around 08.30am on a Saturday morning. The farm opens at 10am daily so we were hoping to arrive around 10am, although after checking online we found out it was a two hour journey.
Luckily there was no traffic on the road at all and we arrived at 09:50am!
The car park was spacious and had guides directing people to where they could park. They car park filled up surprisingly quickly, but they do have an overflow car park too which had plenty of room for a lot more cars.
Once we’d unloaded the car, we made our way to the entrance. A queue had formed already, but it was fast moving so we didn’t have to wait very long.
There were two types of entrances. One for people who had bought their tickets online or were season tickets holders and one for people who needed to buy tickets. As mentioned above both queues moved quickly.
Once inside we were given a map of the park and set on our way to find the animals and explore!
I do think it would be great if there was somewhere you could leave a pushchair, so that you could return for it as and when you needed, but the farm is spacious and easy to manoeuvre with a double pushchair so it didn’t pose a problem to us.
We started out in the Jolly Barn which was located to the left side of the farm when you exit the main entrance and enter the farm.
The Jolly Barn has lots of enclosures of goats, sheep, rabbits, donkeys, pigs, chickens and other farmyard creatures. R loved reaching into the goat pen and being able to stroke the goats! M wasn’t so keen on stroking them!
I’m not sure if it would result in the animals being overfed, but I thought it would have been nice if the children could feed the animals, but this wasn’t the case.
I also thought that there would be an area where children could pet the smaller animals, but this wasn’t the case either although there was a small pen in the middle with some ferrets in. There were staff inside holding the ferrets so children could stroke them.
Also inside the Jolly Barn is a giant chalkboard which R and M loved drawing on!
There’s also a little play area inside which includes a combine harvester and tractor complete with slides and tubes for children to crawl through. They even had life size plastic cows you could milk – although it was water!
Around the corner from the Jolly Barn is an underpass which lead us to Percy’s Piggery.
I’d seen upon arrival to Folly Farm that you could hop on the Land Train at 11am, which departs just outside Percy’s Piggery and we made it there just on time so we all hopped on board!
The Land Train takes you around the outdoor paddocks to see the deer enclosure, sheep, pigs and other animal breeds. The girls loved being pulled around by a tractor!
We then made our way back over to the main site and decided it was time for some food. We ate outside sat on a picnic bench after grabbing two chicken burgers with chips for me and daddy and two kids chicken nugget meals for the girls from The Grilled Burger Co.
It was yummy!
We then made our way over to see the other animals.
We saw giraffes.
Penguins, lions, monkeys.
Camels, a capybara, meercats and lots of other animals.
I’ve been to a few farms and zoos and thought it was a bit of a shame that the animals were behind fences as it made it more difficult to see them. Bristol Zoo for example has some animals such as Lions behind glass so you can easily see them.
Whilst at Folly Farm we also wandered through the Vintage Funfair and R and M spent some time playing in the soft play area, which was great!
Other areas that we didn’t get to make use of were the play areas and a big ferris wheel. They also have a small sandpit and go-karts.
There’s plenty of places to eat and lots of picnic benches to sit down outside. They also have lots of indoor seating too.
Overall, we had a great time at Folly Farm and will be sure to visit again soon!
Accomodation
As mentioned above I couldn’t write this post without mentioning the hotel that we spent the night in.
The Nant-Y-Ffin Hotel and Motel is located near Llandisilio and is just a short 15 minute drive from Folly Farm.
I’d highly recommend it to anyone wanting to stay overnight near Folly Farm.
I rang about a week before we were due to go to Folly Farm after discovering that most ‘big chain’ hotels such as travel lodge were all fully booked.
The man I spoke to, I wish I could remember his name, was welcoming, friendly and very accommodating after I’d explained that we had two year old twins who would be sharing a bed with us.
On our way to the hotel, we got slightly lost, which I take full responsibility for after mistaking a road for a no-entry route, which turned to be the way we should have gone! Anyway, I rang the hotel and the same man who took our booking answered and directed us to the hotel. He even stood outside and waited for us on the main road.
I went inside to check in and after signing into the guest book I was shown to our room.
We had a family room which was located on the ground floor. We had a front and back door so our room was in the style of a motel which I loved!
The room was spacious, exceptionally clean and had enough tea bags, milk and sugar for a good week!
We were able to park our car right outside our room which was very handy for bringing our suitcases into the room.
The room had an en-suite, flat screen TV, free wi-fi access and a view of the gardens.
The beds were comfortable and we even had a little patio area with chair so we could sit outside. I was joined by a few friendly felines too!
After emptying our cases we made our way down to the restaurant.
The restaurant is open seven days a week and offers a wide range of fresh and local produce.
They have an A’La Carte Menu which is very reasonably priced. I would highly recommend the Homemade chicken curry, which I had with rice and chips. It was delicious!
They even have a children’s menu.
The following morning we had a full welsh breakfast, which again tasted amazing. In addition to a cooked breakfast you could help yourself to cereal, fruit and yoghurt.
R and M had some cereal and toast.
If I’m ever in the area again I will definitely be booking a stay in this hotel again! Superb service, friendly staff and my expectations were exceeded!
Thank you for a lovely stay!
