Faweather Grange Lodges - Fun Days Out

Tropical World is a licensed zoo in Roundhay Park, Leeds, made up of climate-controlled glass houses that each recreate a tropical environment. You start in the butterfly house, where butterflies fly freely around a swampy setting with terrapins, koi and Morelet's crocodiles. From there you move into an Aztec-themed aquarium with stingrays, octopus, seahorses, piranhas and poison dart frogs.

Further on are a rainforest house with a tumbling waterfall and reptile displays, a canopy house with free-flying parrots and cotton-top tamarins, and a desert house with a mob of meerkats and tortoises. The last house is a nocturnal one, home to bats, armadillos and pygmy slow loris. There is a café overlooking the Canal Gardens and a gift shop at the entrance, and the surrounding Roundhay Park is there to explore afterwards.

Tip: Free parking is close by, a short walk away, and buses 2 and 12 stop right outside. Dogs, including assistance dogs, are not allowed inside.

Salts Mill is a former textile mill in Saltaire, Bradford, built by Sir Titus Salt and opened in 1853. At the time it was the largest industrial building in the world by floor area. It is now a grade II* listed building, and it holds an art gallery, shops, a restaurant and cafés.

The 1853 Gallery is the place to head first. It displays a large number of David Hockney's paintings, etchings and drawings in a vast, inspiring space, with art materials and art books dotted around. Elsewhere you can browse designer homewares and furniture, a big selection of early musical instruments, antiques, outdoor kit and a cycling shop. The Peace Museum is also part of the mill.

It suits art lovers, anyone curious about Victorian industry and the wider village of Saltaire, and couples looking for a gentle day out.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum is the former family home of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë in Haworth, West Yorkshire. Built in the late 1770s and now Grade I listed, it is where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels, including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

You can walk through the rooms where they lived and worked, and see items from a collection designated as Outstanding. That includes the mahogany desk where Charlotte wrote her novels. Changing exhibitions and events run through the year, and a free digital guide adds more of the story. It suits book lovers and anyone curious about Yorkshire's literary history. Families will find it a good way to bring real history to life for children, and the moorland setting is part of the story.

Tip: Download the free Bloomberg Connects digital guide to get more of the Brontë story before and during your visit.

The National Science and Media Museum in the heart of Bradford explores how image and sound technologies have shaped our lives. Part of the Science Museum Group, it has galleries on photography, videogaming, and the science of light and colour, plus temporary exhibitions and festivals.

Highlights include the Kodak Gallery, which traces popular photography from the first photographs to today's digital snapshots, and Wonderlab, with interactive exhibits and live experiments on light and sound. Power Up lets you play classic games in their original arcade and console formats. The museum also has cinemas, including an IMAX with a 52ft-tall screen, the biggest in the region, and Pictureville Cinema, one of only three public cinemas in the world permanently equipped for 3-strip Cinerama. Film fans, gamers and curious children will find plenty to do.

Tip: Entry is free, but book tickets online in advance, especially at busy times. Walk-up entry is available.

Bingley Five Rise Locks is a staircase lock on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Five chambers are linked without intermediate ponds, so the lower gate of each chamber forms the upper gate of the one below. Together they lift a boat about 18 metres over a distance of roughly 98 metres. The structure is Grade I listed.

The locks opened in 1774 and were a major feat of engineering for their time. A crowd of 30,000 people turned out to celebrate, and the first boat through took just 28 minutes. The smaller Bingley Three Rise Locks opened at the same time, a few hundred yards downstream.

Boats passing through often draw a crowd of gongoozlers, as canal watchers are known. It's a good stop for anyone curious about how canal engineering works, or who enjoys watching boats make their way up or down the flight.

Tip: The smaller Three Rise Locks are a few hundred yards downstream, so you can see both in one visit.

Cliffe Castle Museum is a local heritage museum in Keighley, housed in a Grade II listed Victorian neo-Gothic house. It began life as Cliffe Hall in 1828 and was renamed Cliffe Castle in 1878 by Henry Isaac Butterfield, who decorated it with a griffin motif. It opened as a museum in 1959.

Inside, a series of galleries covers local heritage and the house itself. The Working Landscapes gallery looks at local crafts and trades, including a video of clog-making. The Airedale gallery explains how the River Aire was formed, and the Archaeology Area features the Silsden Roman treasure. The Natural History gallery, once the Butterfields' ballroom, holds mounted animals and birds. The Molecules to Minerals gallery explains how minerals differ from rocks, covering colour, hardness, magnetism and fluorescence.

It will suit anyone curious about Airedale's past, and the building's Gothic Revival staircase and vestibule are worth a look too.

Kirkstall Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery on the north bank of the River Aire, about 3 miles from Leeds city centre. Founded around 1152, it is one of the best preserved Cistercian houses in England. The ruins were painted by artists including J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman.

You can wander the grounds and see the church, cloister, chapter house and the remains of the refectory and kitchen. The abbey sits in a public park, with a visitor centre and the Abbey Café for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Abbey House Museum is just across the road. Most of the grounds are accessible, though some areas are cobbled or uneven. Dogs are welcome in the grounds, and a wheelchair can be borrowed from the visitor centre. It suits families, history lovers and dog owners.

Tip: Wear sturdy shoes, as some areas of the grounds are cobbled or uneven.

Cartwright Hall is Bradford's civic art gallery, set in Lister Park about a mile from the city centre, with scenic views over the city. The purpose-built building is in the Baroque style and was designed by the same architects as Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Inside, the permanent collection runs from Old Masters to 20th-century British paintings and sculpture. The gallery also collects work linked to the cultural background of many post-war migrants to the Bradford area, including contemporary South Asian art such as Islamic calligraphy, phulkari-style textiles and Sikh art. Alongside this, there is a biennial open exhibition and a programme of contemporary and historical exhibitions by local, national and international artists.