LEEDS or YORK activities/days out with toddlers?

[AdamantEve]

Any suggestions welcome! I have a 3 year old and a one year old and will be spending a weekend in June in either Leeds or York (not sure which yet so suggestions for both are needed please!)

Open to anything age appropriate - indoor or outdoor - cost not an issue, within reason.

Thank you

You could take out a second mortgage and go to York Viking centre for 3 minutes if that's still going.

Forbidden Corner - but you will need to book well in advance
www.theforbiddencorner.co.uk

Not quite Leeds or York, but Hesketh farm park at Bolton Abbey and Harlow Carr RHS gardens at Harrogate were both big hits as days out with my charges over the Easter holidays. I work in Leeds and they were within easy driving distance.

I haven't been to flamingo land for a couple of years, so it might have improved since, but if you were looking for an "animal" day out, I would go for Yorkshire wildlife park, its fantastic, the zoo at flamingo land was quite tired looking and a lot of the rides aren't suitable for toddlers.

In York, thinking of toddler friendly, there's:

• the National Rail Museum. Free to get into, great if you love trains. a bit boring if you don't though

- Museum Gardens. Take a picnic and watch the squirrels scamper up the trees, and the peacocks strut about. (Used to while away some most pleasurable lunch breaks with a good book and my sandwich doing this!) - Creepy Crawlies is also a great play area. Yorkshire Wildlife Park is nowhere NEAR York, so unless you want a big drive out forget that one.

Leeds:
Castleford Xscape is a 15 minute train ride away (or 30 on the bus) and has TONS of stuff to do a toddler would find good. There's Xplore soft play, which is a great soft play area, and glow in the dark crazy golf. Or there's a park just across the road in the Junction 32 (Freeport) Village.