It’s likely if you live in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, you would have visited one of Bucks Country-parks. With different environments it’s easy to see diversity from the canal in Denham Country Park to the large Scottish pine forest in Black Park Country Park. The parks allow visitors to have a break from the busy surroundings of nearby Slough and Uxbridge. It’s a healthy and enjoyable way to spend your day. The parks numbers have tripled since 2000. This is great news for the parks as they are now earning over £800,000 a year. With so much progression with visitor numbers, it’s easy to see there are serious actions being put into place, to ensure that the workforce expands to meet needs of the visitors.

A Cabinet member for planning and the environment stated that the parks are “a fantastic resource with acres of great facilities”. With visit numbers increasing six per cent a year, new measurements have been put into place to allow for the parking of 896,000 guests. The Langley Park car park has expanded to ensure more spaces are available as this particular park has become very popular quickly. Plans for Black Park car park to be expanded have also been introduced, as the roads surrounding it can become crowded on busy days. The Parks have become so popular that a new indoor extension has begun on the Langley Park kiosk to fit a new tea room. That’s not all; Denham Country Park are building a new playground next to the café that is worth £100,000.

It’s not just the Country-Parks themselves that are progressing. Go Ape have a tree-top course, Segway course and even bike rental with courses in Black Park alone. They have grown massively since it had begun, only starting with the Tree-top course. But this growth has helped popularity of the Parks, especially Black Park. It’s not just Go Ape that has helped the growth of the parks, there has also been the service of San Remo Catering, having Cafés in several locations which attract many visitors. All the cafés are located in honeypot locations making them extremely popular with guests as they don’t have to travel too far to eat. However let’s not forget that some films have a recognisable scene or two. There have been scenes from film franchises like James bond and Harry potter that have filmed in Black Park. Black Park is located right next to Pinewood Studios making it an ideal location for films. All these features add up to massive popularity. Noticing this though, is progress always best? Yes it’s good that Parks are so popular at allowing people to stretch their legs. Nevertheless in 20 years where do you see the Parks? Do you think that if a park is heaving with people, is it still going to fulfil that concept of escaping the crowd to relax in piece?