All Yorkshire

North Yorkshire

Yorkshire Dales

Yorkshire Coast

West Yorkshire

East & South Yorks

Yorkshire Accommodation

Eureka! Museum for Children, Halifax West Yorks

Watch the sharks overhead at The Deep Submarium Hull

Yorkshire Sculpture Park nr Wakefield

Mini Miners at the National Coal Mining Museum

Aysgarth Falls near Hawes, Yorkshire Dales

The World of James Herriot Centre, Thirsk North Yorkshire

Keighley & Worth Valley Railway used in the Railway Children Film

Yorkshire Family Attractions Harewood House Castle Howard Sculpture Park Coast The Deep

Yorkshire's fine choice of family attractions, both in the county's cities and countryside, make it a topspot for family holidays. In Yorkshire's cities outstanding family attractions include in Leeds the Royal Armouries, Thackray Medical Museum, Leeds Industrial Museum and the Abbey House Museum. Move to Hull for the spectacular submarium The Deep and a host more museums catering well for children in Hull's museum quarter. Bradford's National Media Museum offers a choice of interactive media galleries, with the tv galleries where kids can be newsreaders and camera operatives alongside the IMAX cinema. York boasts a huge number of family attractions including river boat trips, the Jorvik Viking Centre and the interactive recreated rooms in the York Castle Museum. Around Wakefield great family attractions include the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the National Coal Mining Museum with underground pit tour. Around Sheffield and Rotherham look to the Magna Science Adventure Centre for a fun packed family day out, and family shopping at indoor shopping mecca Meadowhall.

The Yorkshire coast has seaside holiday fun galore at Bridlington, Scarborough and Whitby with attractions including blue flag beaches, boat trips, amuseuments and funfair rides, Dracula at Whitby, mini railway at Scarborough and seaside museum and indoor waterpark at Bridlington. The Yorkshire Dales and Moors also boast a fine selection of family attractions including interactive rural folk museums, outdoor adventure parks, farm parks and gentle walks and family rural attractions such as Aysgarth Falls near Hawes and the Ingleton Waterfalls walk in the Dales. Yorkshire's steam railways, including the North York Moors Railway and Keighley and Worth Valley Railway offer a choice of themed family days through the year. Yorkshire's stately homes are also a magnet for family days out with attractions such as Harewood House near Leeds, Castle Howard near York and Newby Hall and Gardens near Ripon offering on-site kids playgrounds and adventure parks, mini railways, trails, fun family days, cafes/restaurants and more.

Family Attractions North Yorkshire Moors

The North Yorkshire Moors area contains a number of top family attractions including theme parks, steam railways, museums catering well for children and outdoor adventure parks. Covering a mammoth 375 acres, Flamingo Land Theme Park near Malton offers a host of dare devil theme park rides and roller coasters. The park also caters well for younger children with Muddy Duck Tractor Ride, Splish Splash interactive water play area and junior driving school. X-treme Rides include Velocity, the UK's only motorbike launch rollercoaster where you're hurled from 0 to 100 kph in less than 3 seconds - prepare to have your bones rattled!

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway takes you on one of the most spectacular historic rail trips in the UK. Both Whitby and Pickering at the start and end of the journey are particularly crammed with family friendly attractions. Pickering boasts a historic castle, fine specialist shops, the celebrated Beck Isle Museum and a fine choice of country pubs and restaurants. Whitby is one of the Yorkshire coasts most popular destinations with Dracula Experience, Ghost walks and blue flag beach. Checkout the North Yorkshire Moors Railway webguide right for details on special theme days including Family Days, Wartime Weekend and Santa Specials.

An especially good museum for children is the Beck Isle Museum in Pickering. Reconstructed rooms include a barber shop, Victorian Parlour, Victorian Pub and Blacksmiths,with lots of opportunity for kids to interact and dress up. An extensive costume gallery is also on-site. The award winning Ryedale Folk Museum in North York Moors village Hutton le Hole is another top museum for families with children. Spread over three acres this museum digs deep into the history of Ryedale and the North Yorkshire Moors with plenty of fun activities for kids like the Maze, Whitches Hovel and Elphi Trail following the story of the Ryedale hob Elphi.

Long a Yorkshire favourite attraction with families, The James Herriot Centre in Thirsk recreates living areas of the 1940s and 1950s derived from the tv series 'All Creatures Great and Small'. Kids can learn all about what's involved in being a vet in the on-site interactive Children's gallery. Find out more via the James Herriot Centre's webguide link right.

Family Attractions York, North Yorkshire

York in North Yorkshire offers a host of family attractions. Take your pick from a huge choice of family attractions including York river boat trips, Jorvik Viking Centre, the spooky York Dungeons and York Ghost walks, the interactive galleries and recreated historic rooms at the York Castle Museum and the spectacular National Railway Museum with new Yorkshire Wheel similiar to London's Eye big wheel. See too details on seasonal Ice Skating (winter) at York's Ice Factor located adjacent to Clifford's Tower on the York Castle site.

The Jorvik Viking Centre in York is one of the UK's most popular attractions and caters particularly well for families. The huge Jorvik exhibit travels back through time and literally re-creates a Viking village with Blacksmith's home, river front area, Coppergate street as it would have been and kids will love imaginative fun areas like 'Artefacts Alive' - a dimly lit gallery with four Viking ghosts.

York Dungeon and Dungeon ghost city tour certainly has plenty of local grusome history stories in York to work with. York Dungeon is a great fun attraction for families, with actors playing the parts of real life spooky figures of old, and themed areas such as the Labyrinth of the Lost - a recreated ancient Roman fortress below York Minster.

York Castle Museum is a superb family attraction, with numerous recreated Victorian and Georgian rooms and a huge display of historic every day items derived from the collection of North Yorkshire country doctor John Kirk. Once a prison, the York Castle Museum also explores the history of its most famous prisoner Dick Turpin via exhibits.

Family Attractions Yorkshire Coast - Bridlington, Scarborough, Whitby

Yorkshire's holiday seaside coast has a long history as a family holiday mecca. The Yorkshire coast boats a number of Blue flag sheltered family beaches flanked by top family seaside resorts like Bridlington, Scarborough, Whitby and the quieter beach bays of Filey, Withernsea and Hornsea.

Budget beach family holidays on the Yorkshire coast don't come much better than favourite Bridlington. Fun seaside history museums, amusements and funfair rides along the prom, blue flag beach, a huge choice of budget family holiday accommodation, indoor waterpools, pleasure parks and mini golf are all here in Bridlington. Bridlington now has its own big wheel eye ride as well as indoor Leisure World swimming experience and Bayside Pleasure Park.

A huge choice of family holiday seaside attractions are in Scarborough including cliff lifts, a mini railway, funfair rides and amusements, numerous cafes, restaurants and bars, boat trips and walking tours, the popular Sealife Centre, parks and gardens and two acclaimed golf courses.

Whitby also offers a superb choice of attractions for families including beaches, the Dracula Experience, Ghost walks and tours, boat trips from Whitby Harbour and easy access onto two steam railway rides - the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and the Esk Valley Railway, both of which offer a host of themed events particularly in peak summer season.

Family Attractions Leeds & West Yorkshire

A choice of outstanding family favourite museums are in Yorkshire's largest city Leeds. The Royal Armouries in Leeds is one of Yorkshire's best family attractions. Displays are superbly interactive for children and special events include jousting displays in the adjacent arena, special kids activity days and daily live performances which help bring history to life. A thoughtful and rigorously organised museum, you're looking at the hard facts via definitive collections, interactive display, film and live performance at the Royal Armouries. Combining a prized medical collection with superb interactive features and educational fun activities for children, the Thackray Museum is another of Leeds' top family attractions. Like Edinburgh's superb 'Surgeons Hall', you push back in time in galleries within the Thackray, touring the slum streets of Victorian Leeds to learn about public health and just why not many of Leeds' poorest residents lived past 40 years. Follow Hannah Dyson's grusome ordeal as she undergoes a leg amputation after a factory accident. The Lifezone interactive gallery guides kids through all aspects of the body - kids get to test their strength, see how high they can jump and so on.

Two other highly recommended museum attractions in Leeds catering well for families include the Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills and the Abbey House Museum which has dressing up room Victorian & Edwardian style and loads of interactive exhibits for children.

Elsewhere in West Yorkshire, Halifax has one of the county's best attractions for children, especially kids 11 years and younger - Eureka Museum for Children. Kids want to interact, run around, play and touch things in museums and at Eureka they can do all these to the max! Eureka is fun with an educational slant. Inside kids can discover how the body and senses works in the 'Me & My Body' section, with the help of Scoot the Robot - watch out for the giant teeth! There's some special treats for the under 5's here at Eureka! including the Sound Garden (take a close look at this via the Eureka webguide) and the magical Desert Discovery. Very young children will adore the Early Years Activity Room open in the afternoons only with specially trained Early Years staff on-hand.

The National Coal Mining Museum for England near Wakefield offers plenty of interactive exhibits for children, plus underground pit tour, mini miners play area and outdoor play areas. Also in the Wakefield area, The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a veritable outdoor feast for kids, with workshops, trails and plenty of space to run around and interact with the mammoth sculptures across huge Bretton Park. One of Yorkshire's favourite steam railways for families is in West Yorkshire. Hop aboard the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, which has special kids themed days including Thomas the Tank Engine and calls in at Haworth village station.

Family Attractions Hull, East & South Yorkshire

Hull's mammoth submarium/aquarium ranks with the best of the world aquariums elsewhere in Valencia Spain and Lisbon Portugal. The Deep marine life and sealife history experience is one in a million. Housed in an innovatively designed shaped like a ship venue, kids will love exploring the depths 'literally', as included in this experience is an underwater lift which can take you 10 feet below! Exhibitions and living sea life are numerous, including the Corals, the Kingdom of Ice exploring arctic sea life, and the Big Bang taking you back to before life began. The Deep Aquarium has some unique features you won't find in other aquariums such as the world's only underwater lift where you really get up close to the sharks. The deepest viewing tunnel in Europe is here too, taking you 10 metres under the sea.

Kids will love Hull's hands on History Museum on South Church Side housed in the old grammer school dating from 1347. William Wilberforce attended this school. Other popular museums in Hull include the Streetlife Museum of Transport, Wilberforce House Museum and the Arctic Corsair, Hull's last side fishing vessel (sidewinder). Dating from 1960 the Arctic Corsair is moored up on the riverbank near the Transport Museum with guided tours available. See also Hull's Dinostar Museum just 2 minutes walk from The Deep.

Near Barnsley, The Elsecar Heritage Centre with on-site Elsecar Steam Railway is a superb family attraction. The steam railway does Thomas the Tank Engine days, plus on the heritage centre site there's a kids playground.

The award winning Magna Science Adventure Centre near Rotherham/South Yorks is another top Yorkshire family attraction. Housed within a mammoth former steelworks, the Magna Centre consists of four large themed areas - earth, air, fire and water. A superb attraction for children who can whirl round in the gyroscopic chair, bungee jump, operate a mock JCB or harness the power of water and launch a rocket! Other highlights include the fire tornado and virtual fireball in the fire pavilion.

Family Attractions Yorkshire Dales

Families will love the choice of gentle walks, rural folk museums, stately homes with adventure playparks and castles and steam railways in the Yorkshire Dales. To the east of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Ripon makes a superb family holiday base with a choice of interactive museums including The Prison & Police Museum and Courthouse Museum. Just outside Ripon, Newby Hall and Gardens has a huge on-site outdoor play park with paddling pools, miniature train, climbing frames, trails and more. Checkout Newby Hall's webguide right for details. The Nidderdale Museum at Pateley Bridge is a superb museum for children with inclusive Cobbler's Workshop, schoolroom, Victorian Parlour, costumes and history of transport in the Dales exhibit.

The spectacular Limestone gauge - How Stean Gorge is in Nidderdale and offers cycle hire, outdoor adventure and the locally made ice cream on sale here is particularly popular. Fountains Abbey and Sudley Royal Water Garden is also popular with families with on-site abbey ruins, historic mill, visitor centre, cafe, lakes and extensive grounds.

The Northern Yorkshire Dales is crammed with fun packed activities. Hawes is a particularly popular Wensleydale base, home to The Dales Countryside Museum where you can find out more about the landscape, people and past of this area. Also in Hawes is the famous Wensleydale Creamery - popular with families and renowned for its links with Wallace & Gromit. On the far northern tip of the Dales, Richmond boasts a spectacular castle and you'll find plenty going on for kids here including interactive displays on the history of the castle, spooky stories on the castle's secret passage ways and more.

In the South Dales, Skipton's Medieval Castle often runs fun days for families and nearby Bolton Abbey is a stop on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway and has an on-site family farm park.

Click Search

Tourist Information

iKnow-Yorkshire Links

Internet Links

Home Top