
Lytham Hall
78 acres of free parkland and woodland around a Georgian hall, with a cafe, seasonal trails and cheap pay-and-display parking. The hall tour is the only ticketed bit, and with kids in tow you can happily skip it.
Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

Harry's is the soft play inside the YMCA building on St Alban's Road, named after Harry Richards MBE, who did a great deal for young people in St Annes. It is a community soft play: separate areas for different ages, a ball pit, slides, and a cafe with table service.
It is cheap. A child over 15 months is £6 off peak and £8 at peak times, and adults are free. You can just walk in; booking online adds £1.50. Sessions are about two hours but they are relaxed about it unless it is busy.
Opening is 9.30am daily except Tuesdays in term time, with early closes: 2.30pm on Monday, 3.30pm at weekends, 4pm Wednesday and 5pm Thursday and Friday. Fine for a morning; less so for an after-school burn.
What it costs: Off peak: under 8 months free, 9 to 14 months £4, 15 months plus £6. Peak: 9 to 14 months £5, 15 months plus £8. Adults free, with a £1.50 fee if you book online. Sessions roughly two hours, flexibly applied.
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78 acres of free parkland and woodland around a Georgian hall, with a cafe, seasonal trails and cheap pay-and-display parking. The hall tour is the only ticketed bit, and with kids in tow you can happily skip it.

St Annes' restored Victorian gardens a street back from the seafront: rose beds, a galleon climbing frame in the play area and the Pavilion tea room. The calm half of a beach day.

A saltwater lake with rowing boats, a playground, crazy golf and a skate park, sat between Lytham and St Annes with the estuary on the other side of the sea wall. Free to walk in, and everything fun on it costs.

Blackpool's seaside without Blackpool's volume: a huge flat beach, a Victorian pier with arcades, donkeys in summer and a paddling pool by the bandstand. The cheap day out on the Fylde coast.

The white windmill on Lytham Green is free to go inside, four floors of milling and local history run by volunteers. Twenty minutes well spent, and the green outside is the actual day.

Lytham's oldest park, next to the Green: a children's play area, crazy golf, an aviary and a very good cafe, with the Lowther Pavilion theatre in the middle. Easy to fold into a Lytham seafront walk.
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.