You may remember The Walk with Amal from last year, when an amazing 3.5-metre puppet travelled over 8,000km from July to November 2021. She made her way through over 70 cities, reaching 875,000 people in 12 countries to highlight the journey taken by refugee children across Europe. This year, its creator Good Chance Theatre is… Continue reading Ideas for August: Fly with Me kite flying festival
If you’ve not heard of ‘Soft Adventure’, it’s the opportunity to experience memorable adventures without the hassle of pre-planning or the requirement for specific skills or training. It works well for families as the trips are suitable for a range of ages and incorporate creature comforts as well as activities that are less physically rigorous.… Continue reading Balloon amongst the stars in Arctic skies
Our summer holiday this year was kept simple and we went for four nights to Sandy Balls Holiday Village in the New Forest. We’d been to Center Parcs before but as they ramp their rates up to extortionate proportions even for summer holiday prices, we thought we’d look for something along the same lines but… Continue reading Lodgings in the New Forest
With half term coming up, there are plenty of events in the calendar to get the kids out of the house and immersed in imaginative environments. Dreamland’s first Children’s Book Festival Dreamland in Margate is hosting its first ever Children’s Book Festival on Saturday 16th February. The line-up features The Gruffalo, with Julia Donaldson and… Continue reading Half term highlights
As part of our recent cottage holiday to the Cotswolds, we paid a visit to the Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens in Burford. The 160-acre site is a mix of beautiful landscaped gardens and parkland, animal enclosures, aviaries, insect and reptile houses, farmyard, and adventure playgrounds. Its beginnings in 1969 as the brainchild of John… Continue reading Animal magic in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds
On a hot inset day, we added Pevensey Castle to our list of English Heritage sites to fit into our year of membership. Five-year-old Herbie was keen to get into the site where William the Conqueror landed, in between peeing in the bushes in the field outside (there are no toilets on site although there… Continue reading In defence of Pevensey
For this latest post, I thought I’d start a round up of the castles we’ve visited over the past few weeks. First up is Herstmonceux Castle, which I don’t think I’ve ever been to, even though my grandad used to work at the site when the Royal Observatory Greenwich moved there in the 40s and… Continue reading In search of knights
Let me tell you a bit about Bexhill Museum as I visited this weekend with friends who are local but who had never been inside, despite pushing 40 like us. It’s a little gem with an eclectic collection for its size. It’s also one of the many tourist attractions that has remained in existence and… Continue reading I heart Bexhill Museum
We had a day out to Kipling’s country home, Bateman’s in Burwash, recently and it was another great National Trust visit. After the usual argument in the car park about where the entrance was and why we were not walking there immediately, we explored the grounds and the wider countryside as it was a bright… Continue reading If you can keep your head when, all around you, a toddler is having a meltdown…
Our most recent family day out took us to the Forestry Commission’s Bedgebury Forest in Kent. Our main aim – to find Stick Man, a character our toddler finds particularly hilarious in the film of The Gruffalo’s Child, when there is literally one second of footage involving him falling over in the snow, which has… Continue reading On the trail of Stick Man
My Beautiful Diary of the Amazingly Mundane 