Busy days and planning your visit to Formby

Formby is a very popular place for visitors and when the sun is out there’s nothing better than a trip to the coast. At these times of year we’re incredibly busy and we know how frustrating the queuing traffic and long waiting time can be for our visitors. Below you’ll find some advice on ways to avoid the queues and ensure your visit is as stress free as possible.

Parking at Formby

During the holidays and nice weather our car parks at Victoria Road and Lifeboat Road are often full by mid-morning. We have limited car parking available with just 270 spaces at Lifeboat Road and 300 at Victoria Road.

Once the car parks are full it’s a one out, one in system. This means that queues and delays to get on to the property can be very long. Because of this we strongly advise visitors travel by public transport or visit outside of busy holiday periods. Although wider parking is available in and around Formby, the area very soon becomes congested causing a lot of issues for our local residents of Formby.

Public Transport

Formby has great public transport links, especially by train:

Freshfield station is located 1 mile from Victoria Road. Plan your journey here

Formby station is located 1.2 miles from Lifeboat Road. Plan your journey here

Local parking and Formby residents

We advise parking at the National Trust car parks or planning in advance so you can make use of public transport to take the stress out of your journey. You’ll also be helping our local residents too.

Please be mindful of local residents and their own parking requirements on private streets. Please don’t block driveways or create obstructions which will make it difficult for the emergency services to pass.

Other places to visit nearby

We understand that our visitors want to enjoy Formby, but we on busy days it isn’t always possible to welcome all our visitors onto our car parks. Here are some suggestions for other places to visit nearby:

• Ainsdale – 11 min (4.1 mi) via A565
• Southport – 17 min (8.2 mi) via Coastal Rd
• Blackpool – 1 h 7 min (55.4 mi) via M6
• Morecambe – 1 h 13 min (64.1 mi) via M6

These coastal areas can also become busy during the holidays and warmer weather, so we’d advise checking local website and travel updates before visiting.

What we’re doing to help

We know only too well how frustrating busy days at Formby can be. Our staff, who should be carrying out essential conservation work to care for Formby and protect it for generations to come, so very often spend their days controlling traffic, parking cars or picking up litter.

We’re working closely with our partners to come up with some solutions, as Formby continues to get even more popular.

We’re improving awareness of how busy our car parks get so visitors arriving know what the problem is and that we’re full. That means you can make the decision to either wait or visit somewhere else for the day.

We are supported by dedicated volunteers who will be helping us with traffic, marshalling the car park, walking the queues to give people information and generally assisting with running the site. They give up their free time to help us and our visitors – we couldn’t do it without them.

We are looking at longer-term plans at Formby to improve people’s enjoyment of this special place and reduce the stress of visiting when it’s busy. Working with such a delicate and changing coastline like Formby is a challenge and takes time to plan to ensure anything we do helps protects it for future generations.