43 places across Merseyside, 22 of which cost nothing. Every one written up honestly, with dated events from the venues that run them.
Nowhere in the North West gives you more for nothing. Liverpool's national museums are all free: World Museum with its dinosaurs and aquarium, the Museum of Liverpool, the Maritime Museum, the Walker. Add Central Library's spiral atrium and you could do a month of wet Saturdays without spending anything beyond parking, which is the actual catch, because city centre parking is not free and fills fast.
Outdoors the county does coast better than people expect. Crosby Beach with the Gormley statues costs nothing, Formby's pinewoods and red squirrels are worth the National Trust parking fee, and New Brighton is a proper old seafront. Knowsley Safari is the big paid day, around £60 a family, and the monkeys will remove your aerial. For family days out in Merseyside, rain is almost irrelevant. That is not something Cumbria can say.
14 dated events coming up across the county.
A Pokemon trading-card trail through the Tudor hall's gardens: find the giant cards, scan the codes, battle the boredom. Runs to early September.
Decorated pianos dotted around Liverpool ONE all summer, free for anyone to play. Five minutes of chopsticks between shops, or stay for whoever sits down next.
An urban beach on the park above Liverpool ONE with family rides and six weeks of entertainment. Sand in the city centre; bring a bucket.
Lifelike dinosaur puppets roam the museum with storytelling, crafts and sensory play on Wednesdays and Thursdays through the holidays.
Walk through a pair of giant lungs, meet a supersize brain and follow the digestive system to its logical conclusion. New gallery, runs to December.
Garden games, trails and play activities across the Tudor estate for the summer holidays.
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Twelve to start with. Each area above has the full list.
The park Central Park was copied from: two lakes, a covered Swiss Bridge, a playground with a climbing boulder and acres of flat grass, all free. The visitor centre has the cafe and the toilets.
Victorian gardens with an aviary, boating lake, fernery and a good playground, in Southport's prettiest village corner. Old-fashioned in the way that quietly suits small children.
South Liverpool's favourite park: lake, playground, ancient trees and the Storybarn, The Reader's hands-on storytelling space in the old coach house. The neolithic Calder Stones are older than Stonehenge, which is a good fact to deploy.
A hundred cast-iron men stare out to sea along two miles of sand - Antony Gormley's Another Place, and the strangest, most memorable free afternoon on this coast. Sand, statues, ships from the port gliding past.
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.
Funded holiday clubs with food included, ages 4 to 18, for families on benefits-related free school meals. Worth a look even if you assume you won't qualify.
Seventeen acres of restored Victorian seafront gardens with the Venetian Bridge over Marine Lake, boat hire, and the Tree Top Towers playground. Free, flat and right on the Promenade, so it slots around anything else you are doing in Southport.
The spiral atrium is one of the most spectacular free interiors in the North West, the children's floor is genuinely brilliant, and the rooftop terrace looks across the city. Rainy-day Liverpool's best-kept non-secret, next door to World Museum.
Titanic and Lusitania told in the city that crewed them, ship models, and the Seized! customs gallery in the basement where kids hunt smugglers. Free, and the Albert Dock outside is its own event.
The city's story with an overhead railway carriage to climb aboard and Little Liverpool, a dedicated hands-on gallery for under-6s. Free, on the waterfront, and the window views are half the fun.
Beach, marine lake, Fort Perch Rock at the river mouth, and the driftwood Black Pearl pirate ship built from beach findings that children treat as the best playground on Merseyside. Chips on the front to finish.
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.