10 Best Sports & Activity Venues In Edinburgh and Lothian

The smaller room, on balance. A big arena is impressive and can be intimidating in equal measure, and a child who is already unsure spends the first half hour looking at how high the walls go rather than at the route in front of them. Neither record in our data carries age or session information, so the deciding factor should be a phone call about what their beginner session actually involves.

Midlothian Snowsports Centre is flagged outdoor only, and that is the single most important field on its record. It is the one entry on this list that a forecast can spoil outright, so it belongs to the plan you make on a Wednesday for a Saturday you can already see. Everything else on the top-rated group is indoors and will run regardless, which is why the county's list is more weatherproof than most.

The Scottish National Equestrian Centre and Houston Farm Riding School both carry indoor and outdoor flags and near-identical ratings, so our data genuinely cannot separate them. What separates riding places in practice is whether they run one-off taster sessions or expect a term's commitment, and that is a question for them rather than for us. Ask that first and the choice usually makes itself.

Fountain Park is filed under Activity Centres and behaves like one, which is to say it holds several things under one roof and lets a family change plan without moving the car. That counts for more than it reads on a day with a wide age spread or an unpredictable toddler. It will not feel like an event, but it rarely goes wrong, and there is a place for that in a weekend.