Bridgwater launches free weekly yoga in the park this summer

Bridgwater is turning Blake Gardens into a weekly low-cost wellness stop this summer, with free drop-in yoga set for every Wednesday evening from May 27 through September. The new series is designed to make it easier for residents to try yoga without booking, paying, or committing to a long-term class.

Bridgwater Town Council announced the programme on May 11, working with Somerset Activity and Sports Partnership to bring Yoga in the Park to the town centre. Sessions will run from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in Blake Gardens, and people are being asked only to turn up with their own mat or towel and water. Hugh Grant, described by the council as a Health and Lifestyle Coach in Bridgwater, will lead the sessions, with instructors available before and after class to support attendees.

The format fits a wider push to use yoga as a practical public-health tool rather than a niche studio offer. Somerset Activity and Sports Partnership said the outdoor yoga rollout also includes Burnham-on-Sea and Williton, linking Bridgwater to a countywide summer programme. The partnership says its mission is to increase participation in sport and active recreation across Somerset, while Sport England has backed place partnerships that target communities facing some of the country’s highest inactivity, social need, deprivation and health-inequality pressures.

That local focus matters in Somerset, where nearly half the population lives in rural areas and access to regular physical activity can be harder to sustain. The Coastal Place Partnership covers the Somerset coastal strip from Porlock to Burnham-on-Sea, including Bridgwater, and the new yoga sessions were framed as part of a place-based health strategy aimed at strengthening community connection and improving long-term wellbeing.

Blake Gardens gives the programme a distinctly civic setting. Somerset Council describes it as a surviving late Victorian and Edwardian municipal garden, opened on August 9, 1902, and set in Bridgwater town centre near Bridgwater Library and Blake Museum. The free yoga series follows other local wellbeing efforts from Bridgwater Town Council, including a 10-week Resilience and Wellness course earlier in 2026, and it reinforces the same message now: one of the easiest ways into yoga may be a mat, a park, and an hour on a Wednesday evening.