A great place. Plenty of places to shop and eat. One slight problem, (and the reason i gave 4 stars instead of 5).... Is the parking. It's a victim of it's own success tbf. Top tip: Visit on Sundays. Weekdays. But NEVER Saturdays.

I was planning on meeting a fellow amateur lumberjack on a Saturday morning. When I arrived in my vehicle at 11 o’clock am,the whole place was utterly gridlocked. I drove around for 1 and a half hours and still couldn’t find any where to park. I left feeling humiliated and unable to keep my eyes dry. I decided to not let the owners or organisers of this retail area win so I managed to park my car responsibly in a church about a mile away and walked in( even with my bad feet). I met Donald outside a shoe shop and we both agreed that next time we meet up , we would do so somewhere much better,like Bedford,Kettering,Northampton,Milton Keynes,Peterborough,slough,Inverness,st Ives,Basingstoke, Newcastle or even Manchester. Waste of time if you intend on parking a car.

Cineworld Rushden Lakes is my closest cinema. The tickets are eye-wateringly expensive, so a visit to the (even dearer) Imax is a once a year, special film, sort of treat. Sadly, what the ticket does not include, is any hope of getting a parking space. To go on a Saturday afternoon is to risk missing the film. It took us 40 minutes to find a car leaving that did not already have another car waiting. Our eleventh hour success was only thanks to some nice ladies who indicated to us where their car was as they walked towards it. Clearly, when this facility was planned, no one gave any thought at all to the fact that a 14 screen cinema would need substanstial parking. There's no system in place to give any kind of priority to those with cinema tickets. I was close to leaving my friend in the gridlock to go and try to get our money back. Don't go near Rushden Lakes on a summer weekend afternoon for any reason. You just don't need that much stress in your life.

Been a few times to the lakes and i would say its a nice place overall. Boating lake area is really nice could be a few more high street clothing stores dotted around. If your planning in going for food or cinema and have booked the planning of the carparking will seriously let you down on arriving on time. Saturdays are awful one way in, one way out you can be stuck for hours. Possibly easier to park over the road at the supermarket and walk although its a trek.