Axis has recently assisted BeWILDerwood with a range of transport planning services to support their exciting plans for a new £5m adventure forest park in the heart of Cheshire.
Situated within established woodland at the Cholmondeley Estate, the scheme will feature a range of ingenuously-designed treehouses and activities for children, themed around the celebrated stories of author Tom Blofeld.
When it opens in Spring 2020, it will be the second BeWILDerwood park in the country, adding to the existing site near Norwich.
The scheme was originally approved in 2017 and work is well underway, however the site access arrangements that were previously approved (designed by another consultant) were prohibitively expensive to construct and would have resulted in an onerous impact on the development budget.
Axis were therefore asked to reconsider the access strategy from a fresh perspective earlier this year, and have subsequently helped BeWILDerwood achieve planning permission to an alternative, design-standard compliant access solution that will achieve significant cost savings as well as being more beneficial to the local residents when compared to the previous arrangements.
Lee Kendall, Technical Director at Axis, said “It isn’t very often that we get to work on a scheme like this, which I am very keen to see open and visit with my own family next year.
It is very satisfying to be able to play a part in helping to bring the scheme forward, and the alternative site access arrangement we produced was thoroughly designed with reference to relevant site constraints, DMRB design standards, safety audit recommendations and speed survey results.
The access solution runs across the border between Cheshire East / West, and so we sought to engage both highway authorities very early in the process to constructively seek their input and in-principle approval from the outset. We now have formal approval to the application and work will start on the access immediately.
I visited BeWILDerwood’s existing site near Norwich earlier this year and had a brilliant time – the quality of the experience was exceptional. I have no doubt BeWILDerwood will easily become one of the best attractions in Cheshire when it opens.“
Axis continue to advise on other aspects of the overall scheme including Travel Planning and on-site road specification.
For anyone interested, please keep an eye on BeWILDerwood’s website, details here: https://www.bewilderwood.co.uk/news-and-natter/bewilderwood-cheshire-opening-spring-2020/
