Fleetwood, Lancashire
A hands-on farm park just outside Fleetwood: goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys and owls, with daily animal feeding, petting sessions, pony rides and grooming, plus newborn lambs in spring. Everyone from age 1 pays the same £10 and under 1s go free, which makes the maths easy, if not exactly cheap for a baby-heavy party.
It opens 10am to 5pm daily with last entry at 4pm, and you just turn up. Tractor rides run twice a day at £2 a head, so check the times on arrival. Indoor animal barns, a picnic barn with a bouncy castle and an indoor play area mean a wet forecast does not kill the day, which on this coast is worth a lot.
Families regularly report spending five or six hours here, and the £38 family ticket undercuts paying separately by a whole £2. The Tractor Shed Bistro handles lunch if you have not brought a picnic.
What it costs: £10 per person from age 1, under 1s free, family of four £38. Tractor rides £2 extra.
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Fleetwood's maritime museum on Queen's Terrace: the town's fishing story told for £4, with accompanied children free and Lancashire crumpets in the coffee house. Small and seasonal, so treat it as the indoor hour of a Fleetwood day, not the day itself.
Free parking, a cafe, two natural play areas and miles of riverbank on the Wyre estuary. The no-cost, no-planning option on the Fylde coast when the seafront is too much.
The name undersells it. Fleetwood's seafront gardens hold a large playground with inclusive equipment, a skate bowl, a model boating lake the yacht club races on, bowling greens and pitch and putt. The beach is across the road.
A Green Flag park in the middle of Fleetwood with children's play areas, a duck pond, woodland and a multi use games court that is genuinely free to use. Parkour bars too, though those are for over eights.
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