Pendle sculpture trail

I love a sculpture trail and I think they make fantastic family walks. Pendle sculpture trail is a great Child-friendly walk in Lancashire. Sculpture trails are great for keeping children interested and engaged on family walks. This one is no different and your kids will love finding all the sculptures on this walk in Aitken wood. Find more Family walks North West here.

Where is Pendle sculpture trail?

Pendle sculpture trail is located in Aitken wood, near the village of Barley in Pendle, Lancashire. Pendle hill is part of the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Not only is the area stunning but it is rich in history too.

What is Pendle sculpture trail?

Pendle sculpture trail was created in 2012 by four different artists and in 2019 10 new ceramic plaques were added. The trail celebrates the rich history of the area including the Pendle Witch trials of 1612.

The combination of art, history and nature is done really well on this trail and it makes a fantastic family walk. There were 18 sculptures originally and they are in a range of different styles and sizes. Some are really big, some celebrate the witches and other mythical creatures and some celebrate the natural world. We loved walking around them and seeing what sculpture was next.

We have visited a couple of time, most recently in June 2025. There were at least a couple of sculptures missing and some have worn worse than others over the years. I feel it is still a fantastic family walk with plenty of sculptures to keep children engaged and the play area in Barley has been improved (more on that below).

I have updated all the photos in this guide to reflect how they looked in June 2025.

Pendle sculpture trail parking

The nearest car park is Barley car park which is in the beautiful village of Barley. The car park is called The Avenue car park on Google maps.

It takes about 30 minutes to walk from here to the start of the sculpture trail. This part of the walk is reasonably flat and it’s a little under a mile from the car park to the start and finish of the trail. The sculpture trail is a circular walk that you then walk the 1 mile back to the village by the same route.

There is very limited on road parking in Barley. The car park also gets full very fast too. The car park is right next to the Barley picnic area and there are toilets and a cafe too (The cabin cafe, which has indoor and outdoor seating and you can pick up walk leaflets from here).

This is the car park for the village, Pendle sculpture trail, joining the Pendle way footpath, a walk around two Ogden reservoirs and also walking up the iconic Pendle hill (there is a nearer lay-by parking on Barley lane if you want the easiest and most child-friendly climb for pendle hill walk). You should try to arrive early as we arrived at lunchtime and almost didn’t get a space.

The car park is one where your number plate is recorded and you pay on return. I prefer these types of car parks on walks as you don’t have to worry about it taking slightly longer than you paid for! At the time of writing (June 2025) it was £1.50 for up to 3 hours and £3 for over 3 hours.

How to get to pendle sculpture trail

Once you are parked up you will find a path through Barley picnic area (right behind the toilet block), across the river and then past the little play area and follow the path through the village until you reach the private road to Black Moss reservoirs.

There are a couple of pubs (Pendle Inn is one of them) in the village of Barley and although only small, the play area is lovely (recently renovated too). My kids played on it for a bit on both the way up and down. They are 9 and 12 and there were equipment for them as well as some stuff for younger children.

Once you are on the private road, walk past lower black Moss reservoir and then the first part of upper black moss reservoir until you reach the turn to your right. Up until this point there have been no turn offs and there is a large board with details of the sculpture trail on the right too. Then the path will turn left through the first gate and then shortly after you will reach a second gate which is the start of the Pendle sculpture trail.

The path up into Pendle woods starts off fairly steep but it doesn’t last all that long. Once the path starts to level off the sculpture trail starts and the sculptures are grouped reasonably close together. There are clear waymarkers to guide you around the circular trail which then takes you back to the steep path back down to the reservoir.

How long is the pendle sculpture trail?

The full walk from the car park, around the sculpture trail and back is 3 miles in total. This includes a slightly less than 1 mile walk from the car park each way.

Is Pendle sculpture trail pram friendly?

Definitely not! The walk from the car park to the start of the sculpture trail is pram-friendly and it is a nice walk to enjoy (there and back would take less than an hour). However, the sculpture trail starts with a very steep hill and it’s a rocky path (not scrambly but just rocky enough for pram wheels to get stuck even if you didn’t mind the very steep gradient).

I wouldn’t fancy pushing a pram up or down this section. It is a great child-friendly Lancashire walk though as long as they can tolerate a short, sharp climb. Once you get to the start of the trail, the path levels off and is reasonably flat around the circular trail before you need to walk back down to the reservoirs. There were lots of young children on our visit.

There are many great pram-friendly walks in Lancashire though. Find them all here – pram-friendly walks in Lancashire

Our verdict

We really enjoy this family walk and we have done it twice now. I’d definitely go back as well to explore more of the Pendle area. Although the sculptures only cover the middle third of the walk, they are great sculptures and enough to make it worth visiting. The play area near the car park also really helped make this a walk the children enjoyed too.

We were there for a little over 2 hours and parking was £1.50 so this is a very cheap afternoon or morning out. There are lots more places in the area that you could combine your visit with such as visiting the Atom in Wycoller.

Find more things to do with kids in the Forest of Bowland here.

Nearby places to visit

How about visiting Billy Bob’s Preston (you’re possibly closer to the Skipton one if you are heading hear after the pendle sculpture trails.

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