14 foot round trampoline

Kids nowadays often do not get enough exercise, so we bought a trampoline to give more opportunities for healthy play.

A few years ago, trampolines were much more expensive, so when toys’r'us advertised a 14 foot (4.25 metre) diameter round trampoline for £150 we decided to go for it.

It came as two heavy packages that could only just fit in a large car with all the seats folded away, and took a few hours to assemble.

The amount of use it has received has exceeded our expectations. Even in winter the kids will often spend an hour jumping around. They both have trampolining lessons at the local leisure centre, so of course they want to do all their tricks and we have to be quite strict about what is or is not allowed.

It’s a heavy beast, and I like to move it around a bit every few weeks in summer to give the grass under it a chance to recover (because the black mat blocks much of the light). I can just manage to drag it across the grass with a great deal of effort.

The construction seems solid, and has given us no problems to date. The mat can be removed to stop people from using it when we’re away, but it takes about an hour to remove the mat and surround, and another hour to replace them when we get back.

The mat is not as springy as the one on the trampoline at the leisure centre, but it’s adequate, and the “euroActive” logo in the middle of the mat helps accurate jumping.

Now if I could just find a way to stop the children squealing so loudly with excitement when they’re on it…

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2006 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.