Category × County
10 Best Adventure Days Out In Greater Manchester
Three of these ten get you off the ground, and they do it in three different ways that families regularly confuse when booking. Go Ape Rivington is a course you work your way through, so the day is a sequence of things you climb, cross and let go of. Zip World Manchester is a ride rather than a course, which means an intense few minutes and a long anticipation either side. Sky High Adventure is the indoor version and the only one of the three flagged indoors in our records. Knowing which of those three shapes you have bought is the difference between a delighted child and a very short outing.
Top adventure days out in Greater Manchester
Showing 1–10 of 10
AdventureManchester Spy Mission Treasure Trail
AdventureManchester Wizard's Spellbook Treasure Trail
Sports & ActivitiesSky High Adventure
AdventureGo Ape Rivington
AdventureZip World Manchester
AdventureAir Raid Shelters
AdventureEast Lancashire Mystery Treasure Trail
Parks and PlaygroundsHaigh Woodland Park
Children's FarmsReddish Vale Farm
AdventureUppermill Spy Mission Treasure Trail
The rest of the ten pull in other directions. Air Raid Shelters goes the opposite way entirely, underground rather than up, and carries both indoor and outdoor flags. Haigh Woodland Park is filed under parks and playgrounds and is the gentlest thing on this list. Three of the ten are self-guided treasure trails, and while they are perfectly good walks, counting them alongside a high ropes course makes this category look broader than it is.
Adventure Days Out in Greater Manchester: FAQs
Go Ape Rivington or Zip World Manchester?
Time is the honest difference. A course occupies a substantial part of a day and the child is doing something continuously, so it suits anyone who wants to be busy and to feel they have achieved something. A zip is short, dramatic and finished, which is thrilling for a child who wants the fear without the endurance and disappointing for one who thought they had a whole day booked. Both sites also apply their own restrictions on who can take part, so check yours before anyone gets excited.
What is a treasure trail, exactly?
A self-guided route you follow on foot, with clues taken from what you pass along the way, bought as a product rather than visited as a site. Three of the ten entries here are that, produced by the same publisher and set in different places. They are a genuinely good way of making a walk palatable to a child with no interest in walking. They are not, however, an attraction with a car park and a gate, and it is worth knowing which you have chosen.
What is there if it rains?
Three of the ten record indoor space, and Sky High Adventure is the one that keeps the height and drops the weather, which makes it the obvious wet-day substitute for the outdoor climbing. Air Raid Shelters is indoors in the most literal sense and unaffected by anything happening above it. The trails become miserable in rain and the ropes courses may not run at all in bad conditions, so a poor forecast narrows this list quickly.
What age does this category start working at?
Later than parents hope. Height and weight limits govern the climbing and zip entries, and a child who is keen but small will be turned away at the start, which is a hard thing to explain in a car park. The underground and woodland entries have no such barrier and work from about four upwards. If your children straddle that line, pick a site where the younger one has something to do while the older one is up in the trees.