I’m not a girly girl but I do enjoy a look around the shops so was very excited when I was invited to visit The Bentall Shopping Centre in south London. Edward and I regularly go to our local shopping centre where we are experts in navigating the shops with aisles wide enough to accommodate the buggy, clean baby changing facilities and great coffee shops with helpful staff. How would The Bentall Centre compare?

Shop ’til you drop

It’s a bit of a journey from our patch of London  so Edward and I set off on our epic journey early in the day. Fortunately he loves traveling by tube and train so didn’t mind the journey and the centre was really easy to find and well signposted from the station. Our first stop was to sample a hot drink and pastry at the new Costa Coffee before we explored the centre, then we were off to look at the World Of Children Creche. As soon as Edward saw all of the toys he wanted to go in. Fortunately I had booked him a place and he had his first ever visit to a creche where he stayed for an hour and a half! I was so very proud of him and it left me free to explore the shops 🙂

The Bentall Centre has all the big chains you would expect, including a Virgin gym with pool, H&M, Waterstones, Build-A-Bear, Polarn O. Pyret as well as the smaller shops such as Fun Learning (which caters for the post-ELC crowd). There’s also the lovely Bentalls Department Store which has a great baby and toddler department.

After our visit had finished I went and picked Edward up who had a little frown on his face when he realised I’d left him. We then went off to use the baby changing facilities (clean but you need an attendant to unlock them).

The only thing that could be improved was the lack of seats! There were very few places to sit down and rest my swelling ankles and pregnant or not, I like quick access to seating. The biggest plus was the creche. The staff were lovely and friendly and there were plenty of activities for all ages. Sadly The Bentall Centre is too far away for us to make regular trips but I would absolutely love it if our local shopping centre decided to open a creche so I could shop without a little person pointing out all the things he wanted.

Disclosure: The Bentall Centre gave me a goody bag for visiting but all opinions are my own.