Bid to make park top tourist attraction

7:52pm Thursday 31st January 2008

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THE Cotswold Water Park could be turned into a series of mini-Alton Towers in a bid to attract millions of tourists to the area.

Bosses at the already popular venue are drawing up a masterplan for its future and believe creating a family-based tourist attraction to rival anywhere else in the UK would be a major boost for the area.

Dennis Grant, chief executive of the Cotswold Water Park Society, explained: "We aren't looking for an Alton Towers in the middle of the Spine Road. Maybe three little Alton Towers that help manage the traffic."

The Cotswold Water Park Society, the charity responsible for improving the water park, is currently engaging with local residents to find out what they think should happen in the area.

Ideas already put forward include a conservation corridor running from Kemble to Lechlade, linking and safeguarding a number of significant nature reserves, constructing tourist accommodation on existing farmland, building an Olympic-sized rowing course and a national angling centre.

The attractions could mean the Cotswold Water Park, which is within two hours' drive for more than 20m UK residents, finally lives up to its name.

"There's a demand for these things so why not build them here?" Mr Grant said.

"They are just concepts at the moment but there is nowhere in the country where someone has created what we are trying to create.

"The whole idea is to bring people and nature together."

In the last couple of years significant development has taken place at the western side of the water park and the consultation is focusing on plans for the eastern edge.

The ideas have already received a mixed welcome. Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said there was huge potential.

"It could be enormously successful but there could be enormous pitfalls if we get it wrong," he warned.

"It is a potentially huge national asset and we need to cater for a wide range of people's interests. Some will be family, some will be watersports like sailing and jet-skiing.

"There is beginning to be a buzz about the water park. I have always been very excited about it and now at long last it is beginning to be recognised."

Tourist chiefs also welcomed the consultation. Chris Dee, tourism manager at the Cotswold Destination Management Organisation, said: "About a year ago there was some research done which showed that the Cotswolds wasn't particularly family-friendly.

"It was the kind of place where you would leave the kids behind. There is plenty of room to demonstrate the fact that we are family-friendly and this would be a very good way to do that."

Mike Stuart, chairman of South Cerney Parish Council, said he would not hold his breath for the scheme to become a reality.

"I have seen so many plans over the years that I will wait until I see the plans on paper," he said. "They have probably got the best management team there now they have ever had."

The water park consultation runs until March 7. To make comments go to www.waterpark.org.

The final plan will be drawn up by the end of May.