Astley Hall & Park
A startling glass-fronted Tudor hall in a free park with woodland play trails, a walled garden and a pets corner. Chorley's pride, and rightly so.
Days out with the kids in Chorley
3 places in Chorley, Lancashire, 3 of which cost nothing. Everything below is within easy reach if you live locally.
3 in Chorley3 free
Chorley's two headline days are both free, both green and usefully different. Astley Hall is the startling glass-fronted Tudor house in a park with woodland play trails, a walled garden and a pets corner; Yarrow Valley is the wooded river valley with a duck-covered lodge and Yarrow Rocks, a play area that lets children take a few honest risks.
The third card is the strange one. Rivington's Terraced Gardens, on the slopes below the Pike, are a lost Edwardian landscape of stone staircases, lakes and follies half-reclaimed from the woodland, free to wander and faintly magical, though the steps rule out prams and unsteady toddlers. Pack a picnic and a day out in Chorley with kids costs parking money at worst, which forgives a lot of Lancashire weather.
Places in Chorley
Rivington Terraced Gardens & Great House Barn
Lord Leverhulme's lost hillside gardens: ruined terraces, tunnels and archways, ornamental lakes and the Pigeon Tower on the skyline, all free and never shut. Brilliant for kids who like exploring, hopeless with a pushchair.
Yarrow Valley Country Park
A 700 acre wooded river valley with a lodge full of ducks, colour-coded trails and Yarrow Rocks, a play area that actually lets kids take a few risks. The Treeface cafe by the main car park sorts the bribes.
Also worth the drive
Not in Chorley, but close enough for a day out.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach
The big one. Nickelodeon Land covers the primary ages properly while the Big One and the wooden coasters wait for brave older kids. August queues are real; go in expecting them and it is a great day.
Blackpool Tower
The Tower Eye's glass floor 380 feet up, a proper circus that still knows how to play to kids, and the famous ballroom below for a fancy ice cream. Buy the attractions you want rather than the bundle you will not use.
Sandcastle Waterpark
The UK's biggest indoor waterpark, kept at tropical temperature: proper toddler pools and mini slides at one end, big flumes at the other. Rainy-day Blackpool solved.
Blackpool Zoo
Elephants, gorillas, giraffes and sea lions in 37 acres that are actually walkable with primary-age legs - big enough to feel like a full day, small enough that nobody ends up carried.
Sea Life Blackpool
A solid seafront aquarium with an ocean tunnel and rockpool sessions - the reliable wet-weather hour when the beach plan falls apart.
Stanley Park
Blackpool's grand free option: Italian gardens, a big boating lake, one of the best playgrounds on the coast and model boats on the lake. The antidote to a wristband day.
WWT Martin Mere Wetland Centre
Otters at feeding time, flamingos, pond dipping and a canoe safari through the reeds in season. One of those places that quietly turns a nature-indifferent child into a nature child.
Windmill Animal Farm
A friendly hands-on farm whose star turn is the miniature railway running out across the fields. Animal handling sessions, indoor play for wet spells, and it never feels too big.