The outdoor waterpark with an inflatable assault course where you can try wakeboarding, paddle boarding and more

With the summer holidays here it’s the best time to give water sports a go and try your hand at something different - and it’s the perfect way to keep cool on warmer days. Plus it can help keep kids occupied and teach them new skills.

Around an hour and 20 minute drive from Manchester is Blackpool Wake Park, a water park which offers a range of activities from paddle boarding to an inflatable assault course. It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete newbie as the park caters for all abilities, so if you’ve always wanted to try kayaking or fancy yourself as a paddleboarder, this is the place to go.

As the name suggests one of the activities you can do at the park is wakeboarding, which is a combination of water skiing, snowboarding and surfing. It involves riding a wakeboard over the surface of the water while being pulled along by a cable.

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The park features the System 2.0 which means wakeboarders can have a continuous ride and makes it easier to learn how to wakeboard. It costs £20 for a 15-minute session with an instructor, which includes a buoyancy aid and helmet, while wakeboards and wetsuits can be hired for £5 each.

If you’ve never tried wakeboarding before then you can book a beginners session for £30, where you’ll get instructions on dry land, a 15-minute session on the water and a debrief. Included in the price is a wetsuit, wakeboard, helmet and buoyancy aid.

Wakeboarding is open to people of all ages, provided they have a shoe size of 1 and are able to swim unaided for a minimum of 25metres. There’s packages you can buy too, perfect if you want to master the skill.

For something a little more relaxed there’s