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.
Bewsey & Dallam Community Hub
Warrington, Cheshire
One pool, a gym, daily classes and a library, sitting on Longshaw Street just west of the town centre. LiveWire's own description of the pool is refreshingly plain: good for lane swimming, lessons or family time. What makes it worth knowing about is that the borough charges the same everywhere. £3.40 for a child aged two to fifteen, £1.15 for under twos, £6.90 for an adult, £9.00 for an adult with one child, and those rates hold across all six LiveWire centres, so a swim here costs what a swim at the big Orford hub costs. If the timetable at Orford is full you have a fallback five minutes away. Under eights need an adult in the water with them. Hours are the thing to check: weekdays 9am to 8pm, weekends 9am to 4pm, a shorter day than Great Sankey or Orford, and the family sessions have to fit inside that. There is no early morning swim here. LiveWire run named sessions across their sites, Family Fun and Rings and Rafts in teaching pools, Family Swim and Aqua Splash elsewhere, but they do not publish which of those land at Bewsey and Dallam, so read the pool timetable on the day. The library next door is free and open to anyone, which is the cheapest twenty minutes in Warrington while everybody dries off.
What it costs: LiveWire pay as you go: junior swim (2 to 15) £3.40, under 2 swim £1.15, adult (16+) swim £6.90, adult plus one child (2+) £9.00. Bewsey and Dallam is one of the six LiveWire centres these rates cover. The hub also publishes Bump Boost, its aqua natal class, at £6.60 a session and land based Good Boost at £7.20.
Know before you go
- This is the smallest LiveWire pool with a swim offer, so treat it as a one hour swim rather than an outing. If you want two pools and a teaching pool, drive the extra ten minutes to Orford Jubilee or Great Sankey for exactly the same ticket price.
- Opening is 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 4pm at weekends, later to start and earlier to finish than the big hubs. The library shares the building and is free, which turns a 45 minute swim into a workable wet morning.
Worth knowing: Children under 8 must be accompanied in the water by a parent or guardian.
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What visitors say
★★★★★ 4.7 across 80 Google reviews.
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