Parks & outdoors Wigan
Playgrounds, country parks, woodland trails and nature reserves. Most of these cost nothing.
Haigh Woodland Park is the one with everything: woodland trails, big playgrounds, a hall lawn made for picnics and a miniature railway, free to get into and charging for the extras. It will take a whole day if you let it.
Mesnes Park is Wigan's grand Victorian one, reopened after a £6.1m restoration, with a playground, a bandstand and a cafe in the middle of town. Three Sisters is the strange one and the good one: three colliery spoil heaps turned into a nature reserve, with a lake and free parking. Nothing about it should work and all of it does.
Woodland trails, a big free adventure playground and picnic lawns, with high ropes, adventure golf and seasonal crazy golf as the paid extras. The free bits alone fill an afternoon. The miniature railway is closed while it is rebuilt.
Wigan's grand Victorian park after a £6.1m restoration: playground, bandstand, waterfall, formal gardens and an ornate iron pavilion with a Frederick's ice cream cafe inside. Free and right on the edge of the town centre.
Three colliery spoil heaps turned into a proper nature reserve: a lake with swans and kingfishers, 3km of flat pram-friendly paths, a playground and a woodland trail with a xylophone in it. Free parking, free everything.
The reliable default: gardens, a children's zoo, a big playground and plenty of room to run. Pay for parking, nothing else.
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.
St Helens' biggest park. Play areas, open space and a walled garden, and it costs nothing.
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.
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.
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.
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.