National Museum of Rural Life

The National Museum of Rural Life at Wester Kittochside, eight miles from Glasgow city centre, pairs a museum with a Georgian farmhouse and working farm on land the Reid family farmed for ten generations without modernising, so it survives as a picture of 1950s farming. The National Trust for Scotland owns the site and National Museums Scotland runs it, so the galleries hold Scotland's largest collection of tractors and farm machinery and tell how land and people shaped the countryside, while a walk or a tractor-trailer ride leads to the farm with Highland cattle, Tamworth pigs, Clydesdale horses and sheep, and the farmhouse rooms dressed as they were in the 1950s. Reviewers say there is a full day here for families, with dressing-up in the farmhouse and lambs in spring, and praise the cafe. Tips from visitors: book online in advance, membership of either the National Trust for Scotland or National Museums Scotland gets you in, and parking is free at the museum with a drop-off at the farm.