HALF-TERM BREAKS
Our top family-friendly cities
Scotland’s compact and beautiful capital is a joy to explore with children
Edinburgh, Scotland Best for world class museums and international cuisine
Scotland’s compact and beautiful capital is a joy to explore with children. Start with Mercat Tours Gory Stories daytime walk (age five and over, mercattours.com) for accounts of body snatching, witches and torture, ending in the creepy Blair Street Underground Vaults. An excellent antidote to the gloomy, if fascinating, vaults is The City Cafe (thecitycafe.co.uk) across the road, with American diner decor, burgers (£9.50-11) and milkshakes. The National Museum of Scotland (nms.ac.uk) is a wonderful mish-mash of science, fashion, nature, art, technology and design. Once you’ve had your fill of dinosaurs, stars and stuffed foxes, head to Mary’s Milk Bar on Grassmarket (marysmilkbar.com) to choose treats from the daily changing ice cream menu (from £2 per scoop). Flavours are seasonal and the ice cream is freshly made every day by Mary, who trained in gelato-making in Italy. Cafe Hub (thehub-edinburgh.com) close to Edinburgh Castle at the atmospheric home of the Edinburgh International Festival is popular but spacious, and has a very decent children’s menu as well as delicious cakes. The nearby Camera Obscura and World of Illusions is open well into the evening — a good way to round off a day of sightseeing. The last Camera Obscura show starts 30 minutes before sunset. Allow at least two hours to explore the five floors of interactive, hands-on exhibits (camera-obscura.co.uk). A short walk away is the excellent Italian restaurant Vittoria on the Bridge (vittoriagroup.co.uk/ vittoriabridge), which welcomes children in an authentic Italian manner (threecourse kids’ menus £8.50, with £1 donated to children’s charity Cash for Kids). It’s just one of many places with an Italian connection in the city – including Scotland’s oldest delicatessen, Valvona & Crolla (valvonacrolla.co.uk), founded in 1934 to serve the fledgling Italian community. The shop on Elm Row, near Leith Walk is the perfect place to pick up picnic ingredients. Scandi-influenced Hemma (bodabar.com/hemma) has a lovely kids’ menu, table football and play area. It’s a popular place for weekend brunch, with families gathering over dishes such brioche French toast (dishes from £4).
Wander to leafy Stockbridge for the Royal Botanic Garden (rbge.org.uk) and the Sunday market in the Jubilee Gardens, with stalls offering street food, seafood and cakes. While here, try Tom Kitchin’s gastropub, The Scran & Scallie (scranandscallie.com), which has a children’s menu of pub classics (dishes around £7), plus a playroom full of toys for when the grown-up conversation gets a bit dull. There are lots of good coffee shops here, too – pick up locally roasted beans (£6/250g) at Mr Eion (mreion.com) in Dean Park Street. Jo Fletcher-cross
Winchester Best for King Arthur history, good food, pubs and otters
Winchester is the perfect-sized city for a half-term break – you can walk to most of the sights without exhausting yourself or the kids, there are green spaces everywhere for letting off steam and you’ll find plenty of opportunities for a pit-stop with good food. People have lived in Winchester since the Iron Age, including the Romans and, more excitingly for kids, King Arthur. You can gaze up at the Round Table (not actually his but who’s quibbling) hanging in the Great Hall of the castle. The impressive cathedral, where Jane Austen is buried, has the longest Gothic nave in Europe, and if it’s been particularly rainy, visit Antony Gormley’s life-sized statue of a man in the crypt where he’ll be up to his ankles in flood water. Combining food and history, Winchester City Mill still produces wholemeal flour, and there are lots of activities for kids to take part in. Pick up a bag of flour as you exit via the gift shop. And they have otters; follow @Wcmotters on Twitter for sightings and the otter cam. Trainspotters should walk or cycle along the Viaduct Way Trail (visitwinchester.co.uk/listing/viaduct-way-trail ), a good long walk to work up an appetite for lunch, or drive out to Alresford for a trip on a restored steam train along the Watercress line.
Winchester city centre has just about every wellknown restaurant and café chain. River Cottage have an outpost called Canteen (rivercottage.net), there’s Rick Stein (rickstein.com), and if you want a Michelinstarred meal The Black Rat (theblackrat.co.uk) is Forte Kitchen’s broccoli arancini with quail’s eggs and roasted broccoli
where you should be. Prefer independent and local? There are plenty of choices, including some very fine pubs. The Wykeham Arms
(wykehamarms winchester.co.uk), near the cathedral, serves a warming pie with cheddar mash (£12.50) and sandwiches from £7.50. Up the hill behind the station, St James Tavern (the.littlepubgroup.co.uk/ the-st-james-tavern) has some good vegetarian mains including spiced dhal with squash and ras-el-hanout carrots (£12.95). A list of local suppliers is written on a mirror, and there’s a kids’ menu, two courses for £9. For breakfast, lunch or tea try Forte Kitchen
( fortekitchen.co.uk) on Parchment Street. Doorstop sandwiches include a confit duck toastie with cranberry and Wensleydale (£8.25), there’s a cream tea for £8.50, and Scotch pancakes with roasted banana & salted toffee sauce for breakfast (£7.50). For brunch, keep an eye out for the Corner House, it was based at the other end of Parchment Street but is moving to a new town centre venue this year (part of the littlepubgroup.co.uk). Lulu Grimes
Sample family favourites – plump croquetas, patatas bravas and exemplary tortilla
Chester Best for fun historic sights and creative contemporary food Most kids hate to walk but add in the chance to climb walls? Enclosed by the most complete Roman-medieval walls in the country, Chester is a great place to do both. Walk the walls’ two-mile stretch, following in the footsteps of Roman soldiers, medieval archers and Georgian promenaders (parts of the wall were widened to accommodate bustle skirts), while getting panoramic views of the river and city with its cathedral, castle and remains of a Roman amphitheatre.
Tucked neatly into a tiny ginnel against the walls, Porta ( portatapas.co.uk) serves inventive Spanish food by Chester’s powerhouse Wright brothers, whose fine dining venue Joseph Benjamin is next door. Porta’s small plates include such family favourites as plump croquetas, patatas bravas and exemplary tortilla, along with grown-up dishes like chorizo lentil stew. Plates £2.50-£10 (no bookings). A visit to Corks Out (corksout.com) sets parents up for some serene shopping along the ‘rows’ – Chester’s split-level, black-and-white half-timber shopping galleries. This cavern-like cellar has ‘wine jukeboxes’ serving over 30 different wines by the glass. Chester excels at good independents, such as the family-run Cheese Shop (chestercheeseshop.co.uk), a must for smoked Cheshire and golden Cheshire brie. Taste Cheshire Farmers’ Market, (every third Saturday; tastecheshire.com) is another good place to sample the riches of the surrounding farmland.
Raining? Retreat to the brilliant Storyhouse (storyhouse.com), a theatre, cinema and librarybookshop. Its restaurant The Kitchen serves refined eastern Mediterranean food including crispy halloumi and fattoush, from £3-7.
Well worth a visit, Chester Zoo (chesterzoo.org) is where BBC One’s Our Zoo found its subject, the first zoo ‘without bars’ when it was founded in the 1930s. Further east, in Northwich, displays at Lion Salt Works (lionsaltworks.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk) bring to life the story of the UK’S last inland open-pans, where salt extraction dates from Roman times to the 1980s. Stop in nearby Great Budworth – Cheshire’s ‘most picturesque village’ – for some of the ice cream that puts the county on the map, at New Westage Farm (icecreamfarm.co.uk). Sarah Barrell