Have you entered the wauwaa giveaway yet? You totally should. There’s only one day left, and you could win a £50 voucher, to buy puppy rucksacks or whatever it is you like.
Meanwhile, in association with wauwaa, I was asked to test a new app called Gobaby London, which helps you navigate Central London with a baby by showing you where the nearest step-free tube stations and baby changing facilities are. It also shows shops, restaurants and places of interest where you can hang out with babies. The new wintery edition also has Boots pharmacies listed, so you can pick up spare tissues and cough syrup if your baby develops a cold while out and about. Boots also sells chocolate, which is an essential part of any Mama About Town’s tool kit.
In some ways, it’s a natural fit for LWAT. After all, this blog is all about getting out and about and this app facilitates that. In other ways, I’m not the ideal person to review it because a) the changing tables of South London would be my specialist subject on Mastermind and b) I tend to go to pretty obscure places. So this week, the app and I have been to Highams Park, Lee, Liverpool Street and Maze Hill and the only time I went to Piccadilly Circus, I was child-free (but I did have that little person I mentioned in the last post). The app info is definitely more centred around Central London, which is ideal for visitors and people who don’t make a habit of hanging out in Zone 3 just for giggles.
There are a few blips, naturally as this is still in development. But it always managed to find us on the GPS and, looking at the area around Oxford St and Soho, it gives lots of options for changing places and child-friendly restaurants which are all pretty accurate as far as I can see. I’ve also taken it for a virtual spin around Covent Garden and, again, there are lots of places listed and they are all coded according to whether they offer highchairs, baby changing and a kids’ menu. So for the average person who wants to visit London, the main areas they’ll be heading to are covered. It’s a massively ambitious idea to try and plot all the shops and restaurants of even just Central London so I imagine it will be a work in progress for a while now, but it works fine as long as you don’t go too far out.
The tube station info is all very useful as well. It’s not a route planner but it does tell you how many steps to expect, if any. Certain stations, like Battersea Park, as marked as “not recommended” because they are too inaccessible, which is useful to know before you get there. The reviews on the app are user-powered and as such there aren’t loads on there yet, but again this is something that will increase with time.
And, of course, it looks stylish, with a signature colour of what I like to call “Alice Becker purple”. I love the added snow for winter, and it’s arrived just in time for the extreme weather warnings. It’s very easy to use and find your way around, even for an app novice. It does occasionally crash out, but that might just be my phone…
So, in general, a thumbs-up for Gobaby London. I’ll be interested to see how it grows over the next few weeks and months.
Disclaimer for ASA purposes: I was given (non-monetary) compensation for this post but, as ever, all opinions remain honest and my own.
London With a Toddler 