The Colour Factory

The Colour Factory is Winchester's answer to getting colour-obsessed kids off screens for an afternoon. It's an interactive gallery where visitors - mostly under-twelves, though adults won't hate it - can play with light, pigment, and projection in ways that feel genuinely experimental rather than patronising. You're mixing colours, playing with shadows, watching how light bends through prisms. The sort of place where a six-year-old will spend forty minutes on one installation while you actually get a coffee.

It works brilliantly as a rainy-day pause during a park holiday. Winchester's only two to three miles from both Morn Hill Caravan and Motorhome Club Campsite and Hookpit Farm, so it's barely a deviation if the weather turns. Holden Farm Camping, further out at just over five miles, also makes it an easy trip into town. The gallery sits within easy walking distance of Winchester's high street, so you can knot in a pub lunch without the faff of driving twice.

Allocation-wise, give it two hours max. Kids will wring it dry by then. It's not a full day's activity, but that's fine - it's meant to be a palate cleanser between countryside walks and campfire cooking. Worth noting that while the installations rotate, the core experience stays the same, so repeat visits within a season might feel thin. Worth the stop though, particularly if you've got restless primary-school-age children and the forecast looks grim.