Bowland Wild Boar Park: the family farm park north east of Preston

Deep into the valley country north east of Preston, and the most-driven-to family day out in the district.

Bowland Wild Boar Park is a family farm park in the Forest of Bowland, north east of Preston up the Ribble valley beyond Chipping. It keeps wild boar, deer and farm animals on a working hill farm site, and it is the principal family day out in the valley country, not in the city.

Its position is the whole character of it. This is genuinely rural Lancashire — single-track approaches, hill farms and steep valleys — and getting there is a drive of some length on roads that take considerably longer than the mileage suggests. That is a feature for anyone who wants a day out of the city and an obstacle for anyone who does not.

Wild boar in Britain

Wild boar were native to Britain and were hunted to extinction here centuries ago; animals in collections like this descend from continental stock. Keeping them is a specialist business, because boar are strong, intelligent and hard on fencing, and a park built around them is doing something considerably more demanding than keeping sheep.

That is the interest of the place beyond a day out with children. It is a working demonstration of an animal this country used to have and no longer does, on ground that would once have been its habitat — which makes the setting part of the exhibit, and never a backdrop to it.

The Bowland setting

The Forest of Bowland is an upland area of gritstone fell, moorland and steep valleys, and forest here means a hunting forest, which is why most of it is open moor, not trees. The park sits inside that landscape, never beside it, and the drive in through Longridge and Chipping is a substantial part of the value of the trip.

Beacon Fell is the accessible southern edge of the same district and is much closer to the city. The two make a natural pairing for a full day out: the fell gives the view and the short climb, the park gives the animals and somewhere for children to be.

Getting there from Preston

It is a drive, north east through Longridge and Chipping into the valley, and public transport is not a practical option for it. Allow considerably longer than the distance suggests: the roads narrow steadily on the way in and the last stretch is hill-farm lane, and barely a road at all. The travel sheet covers the direction and the wider road picture.

For anyone without a car, the honest recommendation is Preston's own outdoor provision instead. The parks, the river corridor reserves and the 21-mile Guild Wheel are all reachable on foot from the city centre and all of them are free.

Worth a phone call before a long drive

Confirming directly before setting out matters more here than almost anywhere else on this site, because the journey is long enough that a wasted trip costs a whole day, not an hour.

What is stable is what the place is, where it sits, what it keeps and how long the drive takes to feel.

Chipping, and the road in

The village of Chipping is worth stopping in on the way. It is one of the best-preserved small settlements in the Ribble valley, with a stone-built core and a history as a market and craft village, never an agricultural hamlet, and it is the point at which the drive stops feeling like leaving Preston and starts feeling like arriving somewhere.

Beyond it the roads climb and narrow towards the fell edge. That transition is the reason the trip is worth making even for adults with no interest in a farm park: within forty minutes of a city centre you are in genuine upland farming country, which is not true of many English cities.

What Bowland is like to be in

Sparse. The Forest of Bowland has very few villages, very little through traffic and long stretches of open moor between valleys, and it is one of the quietest designated landscapes in England despite sitting between two large conurbations. The reason is that no main road crosses it usefully, so nobody passes through by accident.

That emptiness is the district's real attraction and the farm park is a way into it with children in the car. For the same landscape without the animals, Beacon Fell is the shorter version.