The Best UK Cities to Visit with Kids

As the summer holidays roll around, the same thought crosses every parent’s mind – “Just how will I keep the kids entertained for six whole weeks?!”. A day trip to a nearby town or city can often be the answer, proving to be a new and exciting adventure for parents and children alike. The question is, however, just which city is the best place to visit with your little ones?

We wanted to find out, so we set about analysing the UK’s 20 top city destinations for tourists against a range of criteria. We then combined these factors to give us an overall “child-friendly” score for each destination. Due to its sheer size, we didn’t include London in the final rank, but have included our findings below.

Things to Do – Whether your kids are the outdoorsy jump in every puddle type, or just love learning new things at the local museum or library, we’ve looked into a wide range of child-friendly activities in each city to keep everyone entertained.

Where to Eat – We looked at the number of child-friendly restaurants listed in each city to make sure that even the fussiest of eaters are accommodated for.

Accessibility – We appreciate that taking the full family for a day out can often feel like a logistically planned operation, so we also scored cities by factors like public toilets, available parking spaces and the cost of a day travel pass.

Top Three

According to our score, the following three cities came out on top:

Manchester

20,151
Car parking spaces (the most out of the list)
1,209
Child-friendly restaurants

Edinburgh

163
Things to do
69
Outdoors (parks, sights and attractions)
14
Educational (museums, zoos, aquariums)

Nottingham

105
Comes second for things to do
£6
Second cheapest family day pass cost

It’s good news for families in the North and Scotland, who won’t have to travel far for a top city getaway; eight out of our top ten cities are located north of Birmingham, with Leeds, Glasgow and Liverpool all placing highly. Leeds was actually found to be the cheapest to travel around, with a family day pass costing just £5.50. If you’re going to be driving in, however, Manchester is still your best bet, with over 20,000 car parking spaces. Interestingly, Glasgow was found to be the third best city for fussy eaters, with over 800 child-friendly restaurants to choose from. As you’d expect, cities in the South scored very highly in the weather categories, with Brighton, Reading and Oxford taking the top three spots for average dry days across the summer holidays.

London Stats

So where did London stock up as per our score? As you’d expect, the capital was absolutely jam-packed with different things to do, with over 500 activities for children to choose from. It also offered the widest range of places to eat (over 6,000) and nearly three times as many parking spaces as Manchester. Unsurprisingly, the cost of a day pass to get around the city was the highest on our list – almost 5 times as much as Leeds.

Things to Do
Things to Do
538
Outdoors
225
Educational
53
Fun & Games
75
Where to Eat
Child-Friendly Restaurants
6,679
Weather
Rain-Free Days
70
Average Temp
23
Accessibility
Accessible Toilet/Changing Facilities
23
Public Parking Spaces
60,829
Family Day Travel
Pass Costs
25

Rest of the UK

We appreciate it might not always be feasible to hop on the train to Edinburgh for the day, so we’ve included the statistics for all the cities we analysed below. Take a look at our interactive table to find your next adventure in a city near you:

Things to Do
Where to Eat
Weather
Accessibility
Name Things to Do Outdoors Educational Fun & Games Child-Friendly Resturants Rain-Free Days June - August Average Temp June - August Accessible Toilet / Changing Facilities Public Parking Spaces Family Day Travel Pass Costs Total Score (out of 100)
Edinburgh 163 69 14 29 875 63 18 10 5656 £8.50 79
Manchester 70 24 9 26 1209 58 20 10 20151 £7.10 68
Nottingham 105 27 10 24 461 64 20 9 15997 £6 66
Birmingham 81 39 10 27 662 63 20 10 16144 £8.50 65
Glasgow 83 27 11 23 801 54 18 10 19911 £12.60 63
Leeds 69 40 5 20 695 59 18 10 18762 £5.50 62
Liverpool 96 47 9 24 582 60 19 10 11799 £12 61
Bristol 74 41 8 19 528 65 21 10 17709 £10 59
Cardiff 71 35 5 22 410 60 21 10 17170 £8 57
York 74 25 12 11 332 64 20 6 17222 £9 54
Newcastle 50 21 7 15 403 64 19 27 8282 £20.60 49
Cambridge 52 30 7 9 228 67 22 7 16810 £11.40 46
Chester 83 21 3 5 167 62 20 7 13208 £7.50 44
Reading 34 23 4 12 211 69 22 2 14765 £6 43
Brighton 42 23 4 12 555 70 20 7 8686 £9 43
Aberdeen 39 22 4 11 214 60 18 10 11164 £8 41
Oxford 42 17 4 12 248 68 22 2 12632 £8.50 40
Bath 52 34 2 3 219 64 21 3 11929 £9 38
Inverness 35 18 3 4 115 59 18 2 5710 £7.40 30

Wherever you’re heading out to this summer, make sure the whole family is prepared. Check out our range of children’s clothing and newborn baby clothes to dress for every outcome (it is the great British weather, after all).

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Data caveat: Data accurate as of June 2019. “Things to Do” sourced from Trip Advisor. Child friendly restaurants sourced from TRIP and Trip Advisor. Weather data from the Met Office. Parking spaces via Parkopedia. Public amenities and transport charges sourced via desk research across a range of local websites. All factors were then combined and given an appropriate score based on importance.