Days out diary - child friendly and family activities

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We went along to the New Inn in Littlemoor as it looked like a family friendly place. It is a pub, part of the Greenalls group.

We had seen details in a tourist information leaflet, which advertised two meals for £8 from a limited menu (I think that was the price, although not 100% sure), and a child eats free with the cut out coupon. They honoured the free children's meal, but there was no sign of the special menu.

The pub was split into 3 large areas, which would have been ideal to create separate smoking and non-smoking areas, but there was no such thing. All the areas of the pub allowed smoking, and although there wasn't many people smoking when we arrived, it soon turned into a smoky pub as more people came to the pub.

The food was reasonable in price, and was acceptable quality. There was fairly limited choice on the menu, most of which included chips as standard.

The pub also advertised that it took cards. I did not have much cash with me, but as I planned to pay by debit card that was not a problem, or at least it wouldn't have been if they had a working machine. They already knew that the machine was not working, but did not mention how long it had been out of action for. Fortunately we were with someone else who was able to lend me some money, otherwise I had no other way of paying for the meal.

My opinion of the place continued to go down hill.

We needed to change our baby, and so went to the disabled toilet and baby changing facility. Rather than being inside the building the disabled toilet was only available through an outside door. As we walked into the toilet I was disgusted by the state of it. It was a mess, completely filthy and even had a discarded hosepipe lying across the floor. We ended up changing our baby on the seat of our car, not the sort of thing you expect to have to do at a "family pub restaurant".

The pub garden, children's play area was also a big disappointment. Although they had got a small bouncy castle, the general area was a mess. There were lots of badly rotten picnic benches, and my general impression was that it was not a safe place to leave your children to play.

The pub / restaurant was completely unsuitable for children, babies or the disabled. I would not recommend it to anyone.