Outdoor Activities in St Andrews

Ask a local, and ask on the day. How much sand there will be by the time you get there, whether the shore is supervised on the section you are heading for, and what any flags flying stand for. A long open beach is a marvellous thing on a still day and a test of everybody's patience on a rough one, and nothing you read in advance will tell you which is coming.

Craigtoun Country Park is the likeliest of the five to take a full afternoon, so establish what will be running on your date. Attractions inside a country park often run to their own seasonal arrangements, separate from the gates, and a child promised a particular thing does not accept a substitute gracefully. Ask also how far the walking goes and whether a pushchair manages the ground between one part and the next.

Not in the usual sense. The St Andrews Treasure Trail is a printed puzzle laid over the streets, so the pace belongs to you and there is nobody on hand when it stops going well. It suits an older child with an appetite for clues. It is poor for one who needs a defined place, a defined activity, and an adult other than you deciding what comes next.

British Golf Museum and St Andrews Aquarium each have a building behind them, so they are the entries that hold up if the weather comes in off the sea. Neither appears here because of a garden, so far as the record shows, which is the sort of oddity worth noticing. Check what each holds for the ages in your party before treating it as the fallback.