Buzzing bars and buzzards
Choose from buzzing bar life or the mountains and buzzards of North Wales. Take a river cruise, play golf at Carden Park Hotel, hike or swim Snowdonia, and finish your day with cocktails in Prohibition. Kids can meet 20,000 animals at Chester Zoo, do the Wipeout course at Manley Aqua Park, or ride the world’s fastest zip wire at Zip World.
Country kids
Head over to Pictura Creative Café, where kids can unleash their inner artist, while parents grab a latte or two. Get wet and wild at Wild Shore Delamere, offering water-based fun such as wakeboarding, stand-up paddleboarding and open-water swimming. Or try the Wipeout-style assault course at Manley Aqua Park.
Learn to sail at Manley Mere with RYA level 1 and 2 courses, plus family sailing courses. Or try other watersports such as powerboating, windsurfing, kayaking and canoeing. Take the Chester treasure hunt and climb the walls, explore the amphitheatre and follow the river as you solve the clues about this ancient Roman city.
Learn even more in DEVA! Expect a self-guided tour, Roman soldiers and lots of hands-on activities designed to bring the past to life. Don’t leave Chester without seeing the zoo, home to 20,000 animals and 128 acres of zoological gardens. Or zoom down slippery slopes, fly down zip wires and beat the Mish Mash Maze at BeWILDerwood.
Plenty of thrills are in store in North Wales, when you jump, bounce and slide your way through Bounce Below’s disused mine on the best playground ever or ride the fastest zip wire in the world at Zip World. Stick around for the UK’s only mountain cart track and the exhilarating Quarry Flyer.
For the grown ups
There’s no shortage of entertainment, between the buzzing, cosmopolitan bar life of party city Chester and the glorious mountainscape of nearby North Wales. Or just follow the promenade that’ll take you from the city centre down to riverfront restaurant The Boathouse Chester on the left and the tranquil Meadows on the right.
Take a river cruise, hire a pedalo or charter your own boat with Chester Boats. Kayak or paddleboard with Dee River Kayaking. Or stick with them for a white-knuckle ride on a white-water experience in the North Wales rapids at Llangollen. Or keep things sedate with a trip round the city’s best sites with Chester Cycle Tours.
Take a BusyBus day tour to North Wales, The Lake District or Yorkshire. Head to Carden Park Hotel and Resort for two great golf courses, an award-winning spa and plenty of adrenaline-fuelled activities such as ropes, archery and quad bikes. Up for a fright? Take a Chester Ghost Tour through the ‘wicked old Rows’.
Hike, climb, swim and cycle through beautiful Snowdonia, or take the train to the summit of Snowdon. Shop at the Rows or Cheshire Oaks outlet village. Choose a musical event at Chester Cathedral. Or hit the town at night, in upmarket bars such as Kuckoo, Popcorn, Prohibition and Oddfellows.
