During the "L" word road trip we had three sites which were kept as "wildcards". I.e, if something should go horribly wrong anywhere else, such as no access or it was demolished we could use these as a place to fall back on. This is one of those wildcards.

Dadipark was a small children's theme park in Belgium, an oversized playground to be fair. Containing swings, slides, go karts, paddle boats and various other rides. Being designed for more younger children there were no face melting roller coasters, vertical gut busting drops of doom and no rides designed to empty your lunch onto passers below. So must be a safe place to take your kids at the weekend then, right?.

Hell no!, from what we saw Dadipark was a complete death trap. Suspended tree walks with no safety barriers or netting, steep spiral staircases with the smallest steps known to man and giant wooden hamster wheels that once spinning cant be stopped!. I like to think i have a little more common sense then children, so i can see the dangers in certain situations, but heaven forbid the damage a child could do to themselves if left unsupervised. I'm not surprised Dadipark is now closed, the health and safety bumpkins would have had a field day.

Anyway the park itself. Since we visited in the summer the park was completely overgrown. Vines and bushes creeping and curving around the rides as if attacking their now dormant invaders. It left like the lost world. Whilst walking past various rides it was hard to control the inner child screaming "Get on it, come on, I want to have a go!". Sure why not!. We climbed into the big hamster wheel and started running at full speed. It wasn't until it was too late before we realized the damn thing wouldn't stop. I tried to shift my weight to the other side in an attempt to slow the wheel, but due to the speed it was spinning i stacked it, taking site out in the process. Comical bumps and bruises ensued.

We continued around the park, passing the mega slide and what used to be the boating lake before spotting, what we thought was a roller coaster in the distance. We had two options, either walk through the nettle ridden path or hop a barbed wire fence into a slightly less bushy area. I hate wire fences i always seem to fall over when climbing them so we chose the nettles.

Out of the corner of my eye i saw something white poke up from the bushes over the wire fence. I turned to see a thin neck and two giant black eyes staring back at me. Ill admit it scared the absolute Shi* out of me, as for a few moments i had no idea what it was. Turns out it was one of the old attractions at the park. Ostriches!. Three to be exact. These birds had clearly seen better days. They were filthy, their feathers were falling off and it looked like they had just been abandoned when the park closed. Clearly intimidated by our presence they squared up to us, spreading their wings as if about to charge. Time to move on me thinks.

We scoured the rest of the park, finding old tickets, park maps and coupons before heading back over the fence and to the car. Since Dadipark is located in a very rural area, it doubt it will be under threat by redevelopment anytime soon and should remain for many years to come.