Boggart Hole Clough
North Manchester's wild park: ancient wooded valleys, a lake with a lakeside cafe and a children's play area. And a name no child can resist.
Parks & outdoors Manchester
Parks & outdoors in Manchester
Playgrounds, country parks, woodland trails and nature reserves. Most of these cost nothing.
6 in Manchester6 free6 suit under-5s
Heaton Park is one of the biggest municipal parks in Europe and it is free, with an animal centre and a boating lake. If you only do one Manchester park, that is the one, and you will not see all of it. Boggart Hole Clough, a couple of miles away in Blackley, is its wilder neighbour: steep wooded cloughs, a lake with a cafe, a play area, and a name that does half the selling to a six year old.
The south of the city has the gentler three. Chorlton Water Park is a flat mile around a lake with free parking and a good playground, the easy option with a scooter or a buggy. Platt Fields in Fallowfield has a lake with a boathouse, play areas and a skate park, and suits older children who want to be left alone for an hour. Fletcher Moss in Didsbury is the odd one out, a botanical garden with a rockery and a path down to the Mersey and no big playground at all, which is exactly why some of us like it.
Parks & outdoors in Manchester
Chorlton Water Park
A flat mile around a lake, swans included, plus a genuinely good playground with a zip line, sand play and sensory equipment. Free entry, free parking, and south Manchester knows it, so go early on sunny days.
Fletcher Moss Park and Botanical Gardens
Didsbury's garden park: a rockery on a slope, the Parsonage Gardens, meadows and a path down to the Mersey. Free, open dawn to dusk, and better for a pootle than a play.
Heaton Park
One of the biggest municipal parks in Europe: a free animal centre, a boating lake, playgrounds and enough space to lose a whole day in. You will not do all of it in one visit.
Mayfield Park
Manchester's first new city park in over 100 years, next to Piccadilly station, with a play yard of six slides built around the uncovered River Medlock. Free, open 5am to 9pm, with accessible toilets and baby change by the play area.
Platt Fields Park
Fallowfield's big Victorian park: a lake with a boathouse, play areas, a skatepark and BMX track, and enough flat grass to wear anyone out. Free, and better than its student-land reputation suggests.
Parks & outdoors elsewhere in the North West
Walton Hall & Gardens
The reliable default: gardens, a children's zoo, a big playground and plenty of room to run. Pay for parking, nothing else.
Risley Moss
A raised peat bog nature reserve at Birchwood with woodland trails, bird hides and a visitor centre with toilets. Free, close and short enough for little legs, but closed on Fridays.
Sherdley Park
St Helens' biggest park. Play areas, open space and a walled garden, and it costs nothing.
Dream, Sutton Manor
A 20-metre white head rising out of a reclaimed colliery, with woodland trails around it. Genuinely strange and memorable for kids, and a short walk rather than a hike.
Sankey Valley Park
A green corridor of canal towpath and parkland running from St Helens down towards Warrington. Flat, traffic-free and ideal if the bikes or scooters are coming.
Speke Hall
A Tudor hall with woodland walks, a maze and a natural play area in the grounds. Free if you have National Trust membership, and the indoor house is a good rain fallback.
What’s on near you, every Friday
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.