Brockholes Nature Reserve
A nature reserve with a visitor village that floats on the lake. Genuinely floats. Easy flat trails, hides, a huge adventure playground and family crafts and events in the school holidays.
Beacon Fell Country Park
- Cost
- Free, parking £1 a day
- Ages
- 3 to 14
- Where
- Preston, Lancashire
- Weather
- Mostly outdoors
- Booking
- Just turn up
Beacon Fell is a Lancashire County Council country park on an isolated hill inside the Forest of Bowland, north-east of Preston beyond Goosnargh. It covers 75 hectares of woodland, grassland and moorland, and tops out at 266 metres, which is a proper summit for small legs without being a mountain. On a clear day you look south over the Lancashire Plain and north to the Bowland Fells.
Parking is £1 for the whole day, paid by card or phone, which may be the best value in the county. There are toilets and picnic areas, and the Bowland Cafe opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm, with service finishing at 3.30pm. It runs kiosk-style, with breakfast sandwiches, lunches, cakes and ice cream to eat in or take away.
The two orienteering courses are what lift it above a straight walk. The council publishes a junior and a senior map to download, so children can find the markers themselves. Beacon Fell Adventures runs environmental education activities for children from the visitor centre. If you want to cook, Carwags Picnic Area is the only place barbecues are allowed, and horse riders park there too.
What it costs: Free entry. Pay and display parking is £1 per day, by card or phone.
Know before you go
- Print the junior orienteering map from the council's page before you go. It turns a walk up a hill into a hunt, which is the only way some children will climb anything.
- The cafe is shut on Mondays and stops serving at 3.30pm. Barbecues are allowed only at Carwags Picnic Area.
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