Keeping active and getting out in the fresh air as you get older is great for your mental wellbeing and physical health. We want to show 5 great local parks around Northants
Hall Park was formally a family home back in the 1400’s until it became a public park in 1931. This is a lovely park to stroll around throughout the year where you can still see original features from when it was a family home. The formal entrance to the Hall still exists today. This is a wheelchair friendly park and lovely to stroll around through the seasons. It has a great play area for children. There are public toilets available and benches dotted around to sit and watch the world go by. Rushden Museum is based in the old stable block behind the house and shows and preserves the history of Rushden
This is a 200acre country park which was once an ironstone quarry and has a narrow gauge railway museum (0pen on Sundays and Bank Holidays). There is a café for coffee, cake and icecream too! A 5km Park Run is held every Saturday at 9am, but you don’t have to run, you can walk the route in your own time.
This is a lovely park to walk around and for local people, it will probably bring back memories of their childhood playing on the swings and slides.
Wicksteed Park is over 100 years old, owned originally by Mr. Charles Wicksteed who had bought the land originally to build houses. After WW1 he decided that a park would be better for local people to attend and in 1916 set it up as a charitable trust.
Mr Wicksteed was engineer and so he started building and designing children’s play equipment and to this day is still a play area. But this is a lovely park to wander through the gardens and around the lakes and open spaces. It has a narrow gauge steam train that runs around the park. You do need to pay for parking but the park is wheelchair accessible. Please view Wicksteed Parks website as it has so much more to offer, boating lakes, a funfair, and entertainment.
This was an Edwardian park which isn’t massive but again a lovely local park to walk round with a reservoir that was built at the turn of the 20th Century to provide water to Rushden and Higham Ferrers.
Stanwick Lakes is a nature reserve and a lovely place to walk around with well-kept trails, birds galore, perfect for twitchers, and a gift shop and café overlooking one of the lakes, a well-deserved pit stop after your stroll. Public Toilets are available in the café and near the play area. There are parking charges or you can get an annual membership.