Happy Mount Park
A proper old-fashioned seaside park: the splash park is the summer draw, with trampolines, adventure golf and a cafe for the flask-and-chips crowd. Pair it with an ice cream on the prom.
Parks & outdoors Morecambe
Parks & outdoors in Morecambe
Playgrounds, country parks, woodland trails and nature reserves. Most of these cost nothing.
3 in Morecambe3 free2 suit under-5s
Every entry here is free, and the only money Morecambe asks for is the splash park at Happy Mount and the pay and display at Heysham. Happy Mount is the default. It is an old-fashioned seaside park with adventure golf and a cafe, and the Stone Jetty down the prom is the flat hour you do with a pushchair and an ice cream, past the steel birds to the Eric Morecambe statue. Heysham is the one worth the drive, a ruined eighth century chapel on a sandstone headland with eight body shaped graves cut into the rock beside it.
Parks & outdoors in Morecambe
Heysham Coast and St Patrick's Chapel
Eight body shaped graves cut straight into the rock beside a ruined eighth century chapel, on a National Trust headland above Morecambe Bay. Free, but the paths are steep and cobbled and no friend of a pushchair.
The Stone Jetty & Eric Morecambe Statue
Morecambe's free seafront hour: walk the 1853 jetty past steel bird sculptures and pavement games, then get the photo at the Eric Morecambe statue on the prom. On a clear day the Lake District sits across the bay.
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 peat bog nature reserve with woodland trails, a visitor centre and an observation tower the kids can climb. Free, close and short enough for little legs.
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.