World Museum, Liverpool
Five floors, free, and it covers three things small children reliably love: giant dinosaurs, an aquarium and a space gallery. The best wet-weather day within half an hour.
Rice Lane City Farm
- Cost
- Entry price not listed, feed bags £1
- Ages
- 1 to 10
- Where
- Liverpool, Merseyside
- Weather
- Mostly outdoors
- Booking
- Just turn up
Rice Lane City Farm is a community farm in Walton, run by a local charity that has been going since 1979, and it covers 24 acres of surprisingly green ground in north Liverpool. The animals have names and the website introduces them: Pumpkin the African pygmy goat, Lux and Nox the Berkshire pigs, Ness the donkey, Caspie the pony, Ryeland sheep, a pond of runner ducks and a hutch of rabbits including one called Meatball.
It is open every day from 10am to 3.30pm. Feed comes in £1 bags sold on site, and the farm asks that children only use those. The website does not give an entry price, so take some change in case there is a donation box. Wear shoes you do not mind getting muddy, and expect adults to keep children to the farm rules about gates and gentle hands.
This is a small, local, charity-run place, so set expectations accordingly: the website mentions no rides, no play barn and no cafe. For a toddler who wants to see a pig up close and post a pellet through a fence, that is plenty. An hour is about right, and it pairs well with a run round a park afterwards. The farm gives its what3words as active.hardly.could, which helps on the back streets.
What it costs: Bags of approved animal feed are £1, sold at the farm. The farm's website does not list an entry fee; it takes donations online.
Know before you go
- It closes at 3.30pm, earlier than most people expect, so go in the morning.
- Wear outdoor shoes, and only feed the animals from the farm's own £1 bags.
- The site does not mention a cafe or toilets, so bring snacks and plan the loo stop.
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