5 Best Adventure Days Out In Wiltshire

It lands better than parents expect, on one condition: the children have to want to be right. A trail turns a walk into a competition against the clue sheet, and a child who enjoys that will drag the adults round at speed. A child who does not will simply be on a walk, and no amount of enthusiasm from you will change that. Try one before assuming the format suits your family.

The clue sheet, a pen, decent shoes and a plan for lunch. That is genuinely the list. Because there is no site and no facilities, everything the day needs comes from the town you are walking round, so it pays to pick somewhere with cafés and toilets rather than the prettiest option. A small prize at the end, agreed in advance, does remarkable things for the pace of a nine-year-old.

Whichever you would happily spend an afternoon in without any puzzle at all, because half the experience is the place. The four trails cover four different towns, which turns this category into a way of choosing a destination rather than an activity. If somebody in the party has never been to one of them, that is as good a tie-breaker as any — the novelty of unfamiliar streets adds to the game.

Both, which is unusual and worth knowing. The clues are written to be solvable by a competent reader with an adult nearby, so a family works through them together rather than one person entertaining another. That makes trails a fair choice across a spread of ages and a poor one for under-fives, who come along for the walk and nothing else. Jungle Parc Swindon is the entry aimed squarely at children.