Visited the gardens today as an annual pass holder...

Visited the gardens today as an annual pass holder, today was my first covid experience. A pre-booked ticket is required as they're limiting entry numbers to encourage social distancing.

On pulling up in the car park, I'm afraid it was a fail. We pulled into the car park and drove past a sign advising that you still needed to pay for parking. The Gent controlling the car park was friendly enough, told us how much to pay and only then advised that it was contractless payment only, great, well thought out, payment made... then the fail, the gloved, masked Gent then reached out and passed me a paper map.. all that work undone if he was contaminated passing it to every car visiting.

Walking into the park was easy, well sign posted, the only fault being that for some of the visitors "PLEASE WALK TO THE RIGHT" is too hard to understand, numerous times the one way system was destroyed by people not being able to read and follow simple instructions. The first hand sanitiser station was sadly stood loud and proud, but empty....pointless, staff were told and premised to report it.

There are sanitiser stations throughout the gardens, all well placed and foam sanitiser that doesn't leave you sticky, it was noticeable that there are no bins at all apart from the entry and exit areas, this was noticeable because people had disposed of paper masks on the floor, again, disappointing.

The toilets are clean and tidy and well maintained and although food was available we didn't eat there, but the food did look lovely and the staff were wearing visors, gloves and aprons.

Going into the shop does require masks to be worn, so don't forget them as you'll need to talk through the shop to actually exit the gardens.

An ice cream was bought and was nice to see the guy washing his hands between each customer, though sadly the ice cream cone is placed in a plastic stand, so again, if anyone else is infected and touches the stand... everyone else gets infected.

A nice, well distanced experience that seemed fairly well managed throughout.