Outdoor Activities in Stoke on Trent

Nobody puts Stoke on Trent on a skiing itinerary, which is exactly why the top of this outdoor list deserves a second look: Kidsgrove Ski Centre and Stoke Ski Centre are dry slopes rated 4.8 and 4.7 by visitors, and between them they make the city one of the easier places in England to get a child sliding downhill. The other nine of the eleven venues follow more expected lines, and follow them well. Trentham Gardens is the flagship — Italianate gardens, a lake to walk around and enough estate to swallow a whole day — while Westport Lake Play Area gives the north of the city a waterside playground and Foxfield Railway runs preserved steam on a line first laid for the collieries. A scattering of pub-attached play sites and an ice cream parlour with farm animals rounds out the casual end: places for an hour, not an itinerary. Eleven outdoor venues won't rival the Peak District an hour to the east, but as a home-ground rotation between school terms it spans slopes, steam, lakes and gardens — more range than the city is usually given credit for.