Basingstoke Canal Centre

The canal centre documents the history of the Basingstoke canal through dioramas, video, photos and information boards. An interactive model shows how a lock works.
There’s a café and small shop, plenty of parking and they cater for children with colouring pens and paper.
At Christmas, they offer Santa cruises to take you and the kids to see Santa’s secret grotto hidden in the woods a 10 minute ride from the centre.
This year it was extremely well organised and Santa was very convincing and highly entertaining telling jokes, singing Christmas songs and talking to the children individually. The circular grotto (shed) was large, well protected from the elements, heated and strewn with hay. The canal centre was decorated too and the ‘elf noticeboard’ displayed all of the elf’s qualifications such as sleigh driving and gift wrapping together with ‘elf and safe tea’ notices.
Well worth the £10 per head including a quality reading book gift from Santa.
If you want to book, do so early as tickets sell out very quickly.