There are certain things you actively try to avoid as a parent.
Losing your children.
Getting lost yourself.
Walking confidently in completely the wrong direction while insisting to everyone that you definitely know where you’re going.
Naturally, we decided to pay for all three.
Welcome to The Forbidden Corner.
Hidden away in the Yorkshire Dales, The Forbidden Corner is quite difficult to describe without making it sound completely unhinged.
It’s part maze, part garden, part collection of tunnels, secret doors and bizarre surprises, and part opportunity to discover which member of your family would be absolutely useless in an escape room.
Spoiler: there is always one.
This is obviously an excellent system when visiting somewhere specifically designed to confuse you.
The whole point of The Forbidden Corner is that you don’t really know what’s coming next. You wander around, investigate things that look suspicious, squeeze through openings, find hidden routes and eventually somehow end up at the finish.
Which is exactly what we did.
Three times.
The first time we reached the end, we knew there were things we hadn’t found, so instead of accepting that we had successfully escaped, we voluntarily went back in.
Then we reached the end again.
Still convinced we’d missed things.
So, naturally, we went around for a THIRD time.
And the ridiculous thing is, we were right. Every single time we went back around, we found something new that we hadn’t seen before.
You’d think after two complete laps we’d have cracked it, but apparently The Forbidden Corner is very good at hiding things and our family is very good at walking straight past them.
By the third trip around, reaching the exit no longer felt like an achievement. It just felt mildly suspicious.
“Are we actually finished, or have we missed half of it again?”
Honestly, I’m still not entirely convinced we found everything.
There’s something particularly humbling about confidently announcing, “I know where we are now!” only to emerge somewhere you’ve already been.
Again.
The children, naturally, thought this was brilliant.
There are tunnels, passageways, strange little corners and plenty of things designed to make you question whether you’re actually supposed to go that way.
And because children have absolutely no sense of self-preservation, they’ll happily disappear through a tiny dark opening while the adults stand behind wondering whether we’re actually going to fit.
One of my favourite things about The Forbidden Corner is that it doesn’t feel like a normal attraction where you simply follow a route from A to B.
Mostly because there appears to be absolutely no A to B.
You explore.
You backtrack.
You find something you missed.
You follow a child who claims they know a shortcut.
You immediately regret following the child.
Then suddenly you stumble across something completely unexpected and everyone gets excited all over again.
It’s weird, slightly chaotic and genuinely good fun.
Having four girls of different ages also worked surprisingly well because there was something about it that appealed to all of them. The younger ones could enjoy the silliness and surprises while the older ones were much more interested in working out where everything led.
Or, more accurately, confidently pretending they had worked it out.
I have no idea where my children get that from.
Obviously.
As a parent, I also really liked that it wasn’t one of those days out where the children race from one big attraction to another and you spend half the day standing in queues.
The exploring IS the attraction.
You’re actually doing it together, even if “together” occasionally means shouting, “WAIT FOR US!” at a child disappearing around a corner.
There’s also something wonderfully old-school about it.
No huge screens. No complicated technology needed. Just a bizarre place full of things to discover and a family collectively losing all sense of direction.
Would I recommend The Forbidden Corner?
Absolutely.
Especially if your family likes exploring, weird things, secret passages and days out that are a little different from the usual theme park or zoo.
Just don’t go expecting to know where you’re going.
You won’t.
And if your husband confidently announces that he knows the way out, I strongly recommend asking for evidence before following him.
The Forbidden Corner is essentially a few hours of getting lost, finding weird things and repeatedly saying, “Hang on… haven’t we already been here?”
And somehow, that makes for a genuinely brilliant family day out.
We went in with four children.
We came back out with four children.
It took us three attempts to actually stop going back in.
So, really, I’m calling the whole thing a success.
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