Farmer Parr's Animal World
A proper hands-on farm park at the top of the Fylde coast: feeding, petting, pony and tractor rides, and enough indoor barns to survive the weather. Flat £10 a head from age 1, which is the only catch.
Marine Gardens, Fleetwood
Fleetwood, Lancashire
The Esplanade at Fleetwood is a long stretch of seafront with the gardens laid along it, and Wyre Council has kept a genuinely useful amount in them. Children's play areas with inclusive equipment, a skate bowl for older ones, an open lawn for kicking a ball, bowling greens, an outdoor performance space, and seating and picnic areas facing the water.
The model boating lake is what lifts it above a normal promenade park. The Fleetwood Model Yacht and Power Boat Club run races there often enough that you have a fair chance of catching one.
Then the nine hole pitch and putt with crazy golf next to the central car park, which is the classic seaside hour and a half. Nobody finishes it in a good mood. Everyone does it again.
Marine Splash, the water play with fountains, jets and tunnels, is at the health and fitness centre beside the gardens and not in them. It runs in the warmer months and it needs booking. Wyre publishes no prices for it or for the golf, so check by phone if either is the point of the trip. The gardens themselves, the toilets and the beach across the road cost nothing.
Know before you go
- The model boating lake is the sleeper hit. The Fleetwood Model Yacht and Power Boat Club races there regularly, and a radio controlled yacht going properly fast holds a child's attention longer than the swings.
- Skate bowl and toddler playground in the same park means you can bring a nine year old and a three year old and keep both of them happy, which is not always possible.
- Marine Splash sits at the health and fitness centre next door, not in the gardens themselves, it runs in the warmer months and it needs booking. Prices are not online, so ring ahead if it is the reason you are going.
Seasonal: Marine Splash water play runs in warmer months. Check before travelling.
Looking for more parks & outdoors near Fleetwood?
Also in Fleetwood
Fleetwood Museum
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.
Wyre Estuary Country Park
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.