Which UK universities are near theme parks?

Cranfield University is the latest to join the elite club of UK universities within cycling distance of a theme park, following the announcement of plans for a new Universal theme park and resort between Bedford and Milton Keynes.

A magnificently opportunistic press release sees the university welcome the plans – seeing Cranfield “looking forward to engaging constructively with the project team and local partners”. The new park will be just four miles away, near a logistics park that feels much more like the kind of thing Cranfield would be interested in.

The actual nearest provider to the new attraction is more likely to be Bedford College, which offers qualifications from the University of Bedfordshire, the University of Huddersfield, and the University of Northampton. The college is yet to make a statement.

Life as a campus with a theme park attached clearly has its ups and downs, but a surprising number of our best known attractions have a university nearby. And Cranfield has a long way to climb before enjoying the rollercoaster life of a theme park adjacent university.

The acknowledged king among universities with a theme park on the campus doorstep is Royal Holloway, University of London. Just six miles from Legoland Windsor, and four miles from Thorpe Park, it’s the ideal day out for all of the family (if at least one member of said family wants to go to the university open day: next one is 14 June).

Chessington has, as is widely documented, a World of Adventures – but the Epsom campus of the University of Creative Arts offers a world of courses in business for creativity and fashion just three miles from the roller coaster related excitement.

Paulton Park (“the home of Peppa Pig World”) is just 10 miles from the University of Southampton.

Perhaps the saddest of these tales relates to the scene of many a mildly disappointing day out for children of the north east, Lightwater Valley. This haven for cut-price fun is less than four miles from Ripon – once hosting a constituent of the University of York St John and then briefly used by Leeds Beckett University, the former buildings are now a suite of luxury flats.

Alton Towers is probably the UK’s best known theme park, but it lacks a truly local university. The University of Staffordshire is around 20 miles in one direction, the University of Derby 20 miles in the other. Uttoxeter, frankly, is long overdue a campus of some sort to capitalise on the current theme park campus trend.

In Scotland, a theme park means two letters and those letters are M&D. It’s in Motherwell, making the University of the West of Scotland campus (just three miles off in Hamilton) the nearest higher education institution.

Beyond this lies disappointment and cold spots, both in terms of the theme parks themselves and the paucity of higher education attractions nearby. Flamingo Land is 20 miles from the Coventry University operation in Scarborough, Margate’s infamous Dreamland is 15 miles from Canterbury Christ Church University. Drayton Manor? Best you can get is South Stafford College (which has a validation agreement with the University of Staffordshire, a provider clearly trying to get closer to more theme parks in order to impress people).

The Paternoster in the University of Leicester’s Attenborough Tower doesn’t count as a theme park, fun as it might have been. It closed in 2017.