Days Out For Free in Leeds

You see, I am a Yorkshireman, I was born with the short arms and long pockets that countless generations of good solid Yorkshire stock have evolved – we are not separated with our brass that easily around these parts.

It also doesn’t help that our household income is down 50% this year, so as with yesterdays diatribe on the escalating cost of “days out” visiting (or not) castles in Northumberland last week, its time to address the balance and advise of “Days Out For Free”, specifically the days out for free that I have experienced in and around these parts of Yorkshire.

Before we start, its a given that my car and fuel come for free so we’ll disregard those costs in this presentation – well actually they don’t come for free, I am taxed on a benefit of £8300 per anum for having my company car so I’m bloody well going to use it…

There is also the thorny issue of car parking, I am the person who drove more than 50 miles out of his way to visit Robin Hoods Bay this year only to turn around and not stay after discovering that Scarborough Council had increased their car parking charges to an unreasonable £3 for four hours, not an unreasonable sum if you’re staying for four hours, just unreasonable when you only want to stay for twenty minutes and realise that four hours is the minimum stay.

So car parking then – anything around £1 an hour or part thereof I accept as reasonable, my family are tired of me leaving car parks muttering “the robbing buggers” but I have honed the art of finding free places to park down to a fine art – even on our 25th wedding anniversary “day out” in the Dales last year I managed to park in four villages and not pay one penny towards parking fees, yes we had to walk a bit further for fooking miles but hey, no parking fees…

So, the actual days out then…

The Royal Armouries in Leeds – free on street parking within five minutes walk or a multi-storey car park on site that is reasonable in an “NCP reasonable” sort of way, entry to the huge museum of boys toys is completely free although you do have to pay to watch the jousting displays outside, heres a tip though – pop down to the courtyard stables 30 minutes before the jousting begins (its free) and watch as they saddle up the horses and knights in shining armour before the event, they’re quite happy to talk about the work they do (the knights, not the horses) and its all a staged stunt show in the jousting yard anyway.
JerryChicken Rating – 10/10 if you’re a boy, probably less so if you’re a bit girly

Leeds City Museum – newly re-opened in the old Civic Theatre building on Millennium Square, no car parking on site so you’re at the mercy of the numerous NCP car parks or roadside meters around there, the meters behind the Infirmary are reasonably priced for a stay of up to two hours. The museum is free and its OK, its nothing to write home about though, the stuffed animals in the basement might interest some and the displays of “How we used to live” were interesting to me until I found a glass case full of stuff that I used to own when I was a child, nothing puts you off a museum more than the slow realisation that you have become one of the exhibits.
JerryChicken Rating – 6/10, worth half an hour if you’re already in Leeds

Leeds Art Gallery – Free again, see the Museum for car parking, children will find nothing in here of interest at all, in Leeds we have the usual municipal collection of  rather boring old paintings, often with a religious subject, that hold no relevance whatsoever to 98% of the population but its worth looking for the few examples of John Atkinson Grimshaw’s work, a local painter of the Victorian era, and keep an eye open for a Seurat, a French painter who led the pointillism movement, a branch of the Impressionists, I say keep an eye open for it but it wasn’t on show the last time I went. Oh yes, you’ll also see a six foot high model of Anthony Gormley’s “Leeds Brick Man” (see Tuesday), the closest we came to having a landmark municipal work of art.
JerryChicken Rating – 2/10 if you have children, worth five minutes if not

Kirkstall Abbey – Completely free although its official car park is not but worry not for you can abandon your vehicle on the streets thereabout and it might even still be there when you get back. Kirkstall Abbey is the monastery that Henry VIII destroyed and although its been partly rebuilt it is still a pile of old stones, hence the freebie price tag, I’m sure that most families will find minutes of entertainment there though and there is always the weir on the adjacent River Aire to send the kids swimming over – see also Abbey House Museum (below) on the same site
JerryChicken Rating – 5/10 lets face it, its some old stones

Roundhay Park – Free all the way, not a car park fee in sight, take a kite, take some bread to feed the ducks, and, erm, look, its a park ok, its probably the biggest park you’ve ever seen but when all is said and done its a city park, it has a big lake and ducks and some football pitches and it holds the record for the longest walk of silence achieved by my wife last month, 40 minutes without speaking to me at all, so its not all bad then.
JerryChicken Rating – 6/10 unless you like flying kites in which case 10/10

Canal Gardens and Tropical World – Across the road from Roundhay Park, Canal Gardens has plants in it as you’d expect from a garden, it also has a severley truncated canal in it, perfect for sailing a very short barge along, Canal Gardens is free to roam. Tropical World also used to be free and was probably the best “Thing to do for Free” in Leeds until recently, now it will cost you £3.19 each to get in and see the same things that were for free, it goes against the grain in Yorkshire I can tell you.
JerryChicken Rating – 5/10 I just can’t forget that it used to be free

Assorted Other Leeds Attractions – This fine city of ours has some very good museums full of “stuff to do” but unfortunately our city brethren feel the need to charge an entrance fee for them all. OK so its not breaking the bank sometimes but its goes against the spirit of “Days Out For Free”, in fact they fail at the first qualifying hurdle in that none of them are free, but for the hell of it …

Lotherton Hall – On the periphery of Leeds this fine Edwardian country house is partly free, you pay to park the car (£3.60, disgraceful) but the bird garden and adventure playground attractions are  completely free, if walking around cages of trapped birds is your thang then Lotherton Hall is for you – the house is worth a visit too, or at least the ground floor is, if only for the fact that its not like a “museum”, more like you’ve just walked into an Edwardian house while the owners have popped out for some milk, it’ll cost you the outrageous sum of £4.89 for a family of five to look around the house and I begrudgingly admit that its probably worth it.
JerryChicken Rating – 8/10, would be 10/10 if not for the exorbitant charge

Abbey House Museum – An excellent family museum with a basement “victorian street” of shops and houses, a far more satisfying way to present stuff to children than by use of glass cases and “do not touch” signs, you’ll pay to park again and a family ticket will extract £5 from your wallet, I don’t know how they have the nerve.
JerryChicken Rating – 8/10, another one that would have made a gold star if free

Armley Mills Museum – Leeds’ Industrial Museum is one of Benjamin Gotts woollen mills on the banks of the Aire, now crammed full of industrial machinery of all descriptions but especially that which made this city’s fortunes – cloth manufacture. An excellent museum full of stuff that is not behind ropes or glass, you’ll pay to park again and a family ticket is another outrageous £5 but at least there is an old cinema in there and if you’re lucky they’ll be showing a Laurel and Hardy film.
JerryChicken Rating – 8/10, drop the charges Leeds City Council, its very petty

The Thackray Museum – If you have very small children they will love the smelly walk through the back streets of Victorian Leeds, especially the outside toilet complete with farts and whiffs and a man shouting at you from inside to “clear off” when you try the handle, they might not enjoy the rest of the museum and they won’t want to watch the display of a live amputation without anesthetic but the whole place is well worth a visit and one of the best museums in Leeds. Unfortunately we now arrive at the entry prices, you’ll pay dearly to park, the streets around are impossible to park in at all let alone for free, and its £17.60 for a family ticket so it falls well outside of the “Days Out For Free” criteria, don’t know why I mentioned it really, but it is a good museum…
JerryChicken Rating 10/10 for the museum, 0/10 “Days Out For Free” rating

Tomorrow we look at Bradford and discover the true meaning of “Days Out For Free”