What is VPX?
VPX is a FREE community organised event. It is headed up by the local police and takes place annually at Victoria Park in Warrington. All the actives are family friendly and completely free. The only thing you need to pay for is food and drink but you can always take your own picnics instead. The VPX events have a big focus on sports but you will also find other activities such as dance, music, animal petting and bouncy castles. There is something for the whole family to try.
When is the VPX?
The VPX takes place every year once a week, usually a Tuesday, throughout August. Check out the VPX Warrington facebook page for more details.
Our review of VPX Warrington
I had only planned on popping in with the boys for an hour or two but we ended up staying for 6 hours and even watched everyone pack up and leave as we enjoyed our ice creams in the last of the sunshine. The day was full of activities for children of all ages to encourage them to try new sports and with the Olympics well under way the boys are currently sport mad so this was ideal and the best thing is every single activity is absolutely free (apart from the ice creams of course).
Between us my friend and I had six children aged 3 to 8 and there was enough activities to keep them all occupied for the entire day from wall climbing to bouncy castles. Despite the heat and the endless streams of children asking the same questions over and over again all the staff wore smiles all day long and offered help wherever they could. The guys on the wall allowed my three year old to have a go and made sure he was secure and happy even though he was never going to make it very far and the people on the inflatable rugby game were equally as happy for him to have a go jumping around with the ball without the harness simply because he wanted to play like the big kids, going out of their way to include him. At the bike station I over heard a staff member offering to change the height of a bike so that a little girl didn’t have to wait for one in her size to become available and rapidly produced tools from god knows where and set to work immediately, even though it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to him if she waited longer or not. They were all fantastic, constantly smiling and happy and working extremely hard all day with many of them being volunteers. I have no idea where the organiser sources his staff and volunteers but it certainly looks like he struck gold when he recruited these guys, either that or he bribes them with copious amounts of sweets/wine/youfillinthegap, either way they were fab.
It’s sad to say that in todays society we don’t have a large number of community events anymore and we certainly don’t have a large number of free events for children so if you are in Warrington next Tuesday, make sure you pop by Victoria park between 11 and 4 and enjoy the amazing activities including archery, face painting, cycling, cave crawling and wall climbing and so much more. We will be visiting again next week as even after a full day the boys still didn’t manage to complete the zorbs, tennis, sensory bus, plus my mini monkey wants to climb the wall again and who am I to stand in the way of boys and energy zapping sports.
Hope to see you at VPX this summer for a fab free family day.
f you are looking for more inspiration for days out in the North West then check out our A-Z of days out post.