Picnic Spots A good picnic spot needs a few things: somewhere lovely to sit, somewhere for a wild child to disappear for twenty minutes and burn off the sandwich, and ideally a decent view to enjoy while you're waiting for them to come back. The North East has this covered in every direction, from grand parkland estates to a genuinely wild gorge walk. Gibside, near Rowlands Gill A 600 acre Georgian landscape garden with sweeping views across the Derwent Valley, Gibside is one

Beach Days The North East coastline punches well above its weight, from Blue Flag beaches with lifeguards and cafés right on the doorstep to vast, wild stretches of sand where you can walk for an hour and barely see another soul. Here's a spread to suit every kind of day out. Tynemouth Longsands and Whitley Bay These two neighbouring beaches, along with King Edward's Bay next door, have held Blue Flag status every year since 1994, among a small handful of beaches nationally t

Best Splash Pads There is no finer way to occupy a wild child on a properly hot day than a splash pad, and the North East has a decent scattering of them, almost all free, dotted between Northumberland and Durham. None of them are enormous, but that's rather the point: turn up, get soaked, dry off on the grass, repeat. Ridley Park, Blyth An award-winning Victorian park with a genuinely popular water play area right at its centre, alongside two separate playgrounds for differe

Outdoor Swimming Pools Honesty first: the North East was never blessed with the lido culture you find further south, and most of our traditional outdoor pools closed decades ago. What we do have are a small handful of genuinely lovely spots, from a heated open air pool tucked into the Durham Dales to organised open water sessions on some of Northumberland's prettiest lakes. A little more planning is required than simply turning up, but the reward is well worth it. Haltwhistle

Flower and Fruit Picking There's something rather satisfying about handing a wild child a basket and letting them loose in a field, particularly when the end result is a punnet of strawberries or an armful of dahlias to bring home. The North East isn't short of proper working farms happy to let you do exactly that, from soft fruit fields near Corbridge to a flower garden growing in the shadow of a medieval priory. Here are a few of our favourites. Brocksbushes Farm, Corbridge

Visit Bill Quay Farm Bill Quay Farm is one of Gateshead's quieter treasures, a twenty seven acre community farm overlooking the River Tyne, run largely by Chrysalis Training and the Bill Quay Community Farm Association for the benefit of the whole neighbourhood. It's a small, unpolished, thoroughly genuine sort of place, home to rare breed pigs, sheep, goats and geese, and it's entirely free to wander around, animal food available for a couple of pounds a bag if your wild chi

Visit Rising Sun Country Park Rising Sun Country Park is a genuine green oasis in the heart of North Tyneside, 162 hectares of grassland, woodland and ponds built, rather wonderfully, on the site of a former colliery. There are four well marked trails of varying length, a lake with bird hides for spotting ducks and geese, and, right in the middle of it all, a proper working community farm that's completely free to wander into. The lowdown: Where: Rising Sun Countryside Centre

Visit the Angel of the North Few landmarks say "you're in the North East" quite as emphatically as Antony Gormley's Angel, standing sentinel on a Gateshead hillside beside the A1 since 1998. Twenty metres tall with a wingspan wider than a jumbo jet, she's one of the most viewed pieces of public art in the country, seen by an estimated thirty three million people a year from passing cars and trains alone. Up close, she's rather more moving than any photograph quite manages to

Visit Plessey Woods Country Park Known locally as Bluebell Woods, Plessey Woods is a hundred acres of woodland, wildflower meadow and riverside tucked along the River Blyth between Bedlington and Cramlington. It has a lovely, unhurried feel to it, with winding nature trails, a sculpture trail dotted through the trees, and a river bank where otters and kingfishers occasionally make an appearance if you're patient. It's the sort of gentle countryside spot that rewards a slow wa

Visit Hamsterley Forest County Durham's largest forest is a proper destination in its own right, the sort of place you can happily lose an entire day in. Hamsterley offers a huge network of walking and cycling trails through ancient woodland, from gentle riverside strolls to more serious mountain biking routes, along with a well loved children's trail based on Julia Donaldson's stories. It's a fair drive out from Newcastle, around ninety minutes, but for a wild child who need

Visit Northumberlandia, the Lady of the North There is genuinely nothing else quite like Northumberlandia. Just outside Cramlington, a vast reclining female figure has been sculpted from 1.5 million tonnes of rock, clay and soil, rising a full one hundred feet from the surrounding parkland. Designed by the artist Charles Jencks, she stretches a quarter of a mile long, with four miles of paths winding over and around her. It's part art installation, part country park, and enti

Visit Discovery Museum, Newcastle Discovery Museum is one of those places that manages to be genuinely fascinating for adults while offering a wild child an entire day's worth of things to press, pull and investigate. Housed in the old Co-operative Wholesale Society building near Newcastle city centre, it tells the story of Tyneside's maritime, scientific and industrial past, with the magnificent Turbinia, once the fastest ship in the world, taking pride of place at the entra

Visit West Park Pump Track, South Shields If your wild child is more inclined towards wheels than wellies, South Tyneside's new pump track is well worth the trip. Opened in 2026 on the site of four long unused tennis courts, this £175,000 facility offers a large, flowing tarmac circuit designed for bikes, scooters, skates and skateboards, plus a dedicated toddler section for those just learning to balance. It's already proved enormously popular since opening, and it's entirel

Visit King Edward's Bay, Tynemouth, for rock pooling Of all the beaches along this stretch of coast, King Edward's Bay is the one to seek out if rock pooling is the plan. It's a small, sheltered, sandy cove tucked beneath high cliffs, just along from the more famous Long Sands, and considerably quieter for it. When the tide draws back, it reveals a wonderful scattering of rock pools, perfect for a determined wild child armed with a net and a bucket, hunting for crabs, anemone

Visit Saltwell Park and its famous maze Saltwell Park is often described as the jewel in Gateshead's crown, and it's easy to see why. This grand Victorian park, one of the finest examples of its kind in the country, offers fifty five acres of woodland, ornamental gardens, a boating lake and, at its heart, a proper hedge maze that has been baffling and delighting families for generations. It's the sort of place you can return to again and again without ever quite exhausting wh

Visit Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Housed in a magnificent former flour mill on the Gateshead bank of the Tyne, Baltic is one of the largest galleries of its kind in the world, and it welcomes every visitor entirely free of charge. Its ever changing programme of contemporary art, spread across four floors, ranges from the thought provoking to the genuinely playful, and there's rarely a dull visit. For families, the real draw might well be the viewing platforms on Levels

Visit Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books Tucked into a handsome converted warehouse in the Ouseburn Valley, Seven Stories is one of Newcastle's genuine cultural treasures, and it happens to be entirely free. This is the National Centre for Children's Books, home to original manuscripts and artwork from some of the nation's best loved children's authors, spread across several floors of galleries designed to be explored rather than simply looked at. It's th

Visit Bolam Lake Country Park Bolam Lake is proper Northumberland countryside — a broad, still lake ringed by woodland, about nine miles west of Morpeth, with a flat, fully accessible path running the whole way round. It's the kind of place where a wild child can genuinely stretch their legs, keep an eye out for red squirrels and roe deer, and generally exist at full volume without troubling a soul. The full loop is only around a mile, manageable even for smaller legs, with w

Visit Ouseburn Farm Ouseburn Farm is one of Newcastle's genuinely lovely surprises — a working city farm tucked beneath three bridges in the Ouseburn Valley, run largely by volunteers, and home to more than enough animals to keep a wild child thoroughly entertained. Sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, guinea pigs and the odd tortoise are all in residence, and with a bag of feed from the farm shop, your little ones can get properly involved rather than simply peering

Visit the Durham Riverside Walk For something a little further afield, with plenty of room to let small legs run ahead, the Durham Riverside Walk is a genuine treat. It's a gentle three-mile loop that follows the River Wear right round Durham's peninsula, taking in the castle, the cathedral, several handsome old bridges, and more green space than most wild children will know what to do with. It's flat, largely traffic-free, and there's enough to spot along the way — weirs, ro