Chiltern Open Air Museum is about a 20 minute drive from Watford. It’s a little village of rescued buildings that would have otherwise been demolished, including a Victorian farm, toll house and forge.
After a picnic, we set about exploring the site. Our two year old loved meeting the animals in the fields, including shire horses, goats, pigs, sheep and lambs, and had lots of fun at the playground (see below – the pic doesn’t quite do it justice as it’s roughly twice the size of what you can see).
We managed to duck into a couple of the historic buildings to have a quick look at the stories and artefacts. One building, the vicarage, had old-fashioned games that kids could play with and our son had lots of fun trying to catch the ball in the cup! Good to know: there are baby change facilities at either end of the site and more importantly, there is a cafe!
We’ll definitely go back to check out the rest of the buildings and relax – it’s so peaceful and we were amazed that it’s just the other side of Rickmansworth. We used our BBC Gardeners’ World magazine 2-for-1 gardens card to gain free entry for one of us, and kids under four go free. Check out more of our photos below: