Museums

Bletchley Park

September 15, 2023 by Penny Leave a Comment

Bletchley Park, just outside Milton Keynes, was the wartime secret home of Britain’s code breakers. It has gone from a place whose very existence wasn’t ever acknowledged to a top visitor attraction, and in my mind it’s a must visit for anyone with an interest in war time history.

The front of the Manor House at Bletchley Park

What was done at Bletchley Park?

During the Second World War, Bletchley Park was the centre of all Allied code-breaking efforts. It housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) who worked to decode the communications of Axis powers. Most famously they cracked the German Enigma and Lorenz codes at Bletchley. The GC&CS later turned into what is today known as GCHQ – the Government Communication Headquarters.

Bletchley employed some of the brightest minds available, but with the vast number of messages that needed decrypting it was soon realised that working through everything manually was simply not sustainable. Instead they started developing machinery to help with decryption and this work culminated in the development of Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital electronic computer.

Part of an infographic showing a variety of numbers about Bletchley Park. This includes the number of people working there, where they came from in terms of previous roles and whether they were male or female.

At its peak nearly 9,00 men and women (the majority women) worked at Bletchley, and it is thought that the work they did helped to shorten the war by between two and four years. It’s incredibly really just how much was done there, in absolute secrecy from those living outside the park.

The physical location of Bletchley Park was perfect because it is situated close to Bletchley train station, which was then on the Varsity line which ran between Oxford and Cambridge. Students and graduates from both these universities were exactly the kind of people that they wanted to work at Bletchley. Bringing with them incredible skills in mathematics, logic and languages.

Saving Bletchley Park

Today we know all about the work that was done at Bletchley Park and even those who haven’t visited might be able to speak of Enigma and even know that Alan Turing worked there. There was a real risk though that the Bletchley Park story might have gone untold. In 1990 the huts at Bletchley were being considered for demolition and had it not been for the work of the Bletchley Park Trust (formed in 1992) it is quite possible that the whole site might have been redeveloped.

Grey nondescript looking squat government buildings. They have a bit of a military look about them.

Funding remained a huge issue and great efforts went into approaching large technical companies whose own existence stemmed from some of the work done at Bletchley. Most notably Google who donated £550,000 and in doing so helped to unlock £4.2m from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Covid pandemic also had an impact on Bletchley and has affected some of their plans going forwards due to reduced visitor numbers during lockdowns and subsequent restrictions. Facebook were one of the companies that provided a financial contribution to help them recover from the pandemic.

Bletchley as a visitor attraction

In the end it was an £8 million restoration project that resulted in Bletchley Park opening as a visitor attraction in June 2014. Nearly ten years later it is now an award winning visitor attraction which tells an incredibly important story about the site’s role in World War Two, along with the stories of the men and women who worked there.

Open every day (with only three exceptions at Christmas) it is obviously an attraction that appeals to those with an interest in wartime or military history, but its appeal goes wider than that with the way that it includes exhibitions on the technology and also the social history around its years of operation.

There are some lovely little personal touches to give you an idea of how they managed to run such a large operation there, and the lives of the people who worked there. A favourite of mine has to be this meno about tea and coffee cups.

A memo about a shortage of coffee cups at Bletchley Park.

Visiting Bletchley Park

It is impossible to summarise in just one blog post everything that there is to see at Bletchley Park. There are so many different exhibition spaces that you could easily spend a whole day at Bletchley and still come away thinking that you haven’t had chance to see everything. It’s for this reason that your ticket is actually valid for a whole year, and this is something that I will definitely be taking advantage of over the next twelve months. My most recent visit overlapped with my mum going there on a trip of her own, so some of our time was spent chatting over a cup of tea in the cafe. As a result I only really got time to properly so three sections. There are so many wonderful hands on exhibits that help you understand code breaking and forming intelligence from what you intercept that you could easily spend days doing everything there.

Multimedia Guides

A phone sized multimedia device with headphones plugged into it. On the screen you can see a variety of menu options including mansion, lake and station x.

All visitors are offered a free multimedia guide to use during their visit. This phone sized device has headphones and a lanyard so that you can wear it round your neck. Available in several different languages, there is a simple to use picture menu that allows you to choose points around the site in your own order. There are videos and eye-witness accounts from people who worked at Bletchley and it really does enhance your visit.

Practical Visitor Information

Bletchley Park’s own website contains much of the information that you might need to plan a visit. Everything from opening hours to ticket prices. You can also book admission tickets online. It is worth noting that if you are a local resident (postcodes within a 10 mile radius) then you get a 50% discount. There are also reductions for English Heritage members. Under 12s are free of charge.

Whilst young children are welcome and might enjoy some of the hands on exhibits and the play area I honestly think that older children and adults would get more out of the museum if they are able to concentrate on what they are seeing there. This is not meant to be an anti-children statement – I’m a mum of three – but just a practical point based on my own visitor experience. There is so much to take in and absorb that trying to do so whilst having an eye on a young child is very hard.

The outside of a low squat building which contains an exhibition about the park's role in D Day.

As well as two cafes and an outdoor snack bar there are a large number of picnic benches on the lawn near the lake that people can picnic at. For something a bit special it is also possible to book afternoon tea at the Manor House on most weekends.

The gift shop contains a range of war time related souvenirs alongside a wonderful range of books and puzzle books. I quite simply could have spent a fortune in there!

The Bletchley site is large, so make sure that you wear decent footwear when visiting. Toilets are located at numerous points around the site and are generally well marked on maps and signs. In generally accessibility is good with automatic doors and ramps to get into buildings. Most of the videos have subtitles and I spotted large print guides in various areas. Further accessibility information is available on their website.

Want to visit somewhere else local?

Why not take a look at where else I have visited in Buckinghamshire, or the neighbouring counties of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

September 7, 2023 by Penny Leave a Comment

When you visit Oxford you can be forgiven for being dazzled by all the University’s spectacular architecture and all the historic colleges, but make sure you don’t forget about the city’s museums. The Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum may be two separate museums, but they are co-located on the same site, and to get from one to the other it really is as simple as walking through an interconnecting door.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

When you arrive at the museum site it is the Museum of Natural History that you will visit first, for the simple fact that you have to walk through it to get to the Pitt Rivers Museum.

As you walk up the steps and into the main museum hall, the size, height and brightness of the hall takes your breath away. Especially on a sunny summer’s day like the one we visited on.

The main hall of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. It shows a tall space, more like e railway station than a museum, with light flooding in through a glass ceiling. Various Natural History exhibits can be seen in the foreground.

I’m not going to pretend that it can compete with the scale of London’s Natural History Museum, but if you’re looking for somewhere a bit more compact then this is actually the perfect museum to visit. Most importantly for many little ones visiting – there are dinosaurs!

What is there to see?

Originally established in 1860 to draw together scientific studies from across the University of Oxford, the museum’s strap line today is “Home to Earth, science and nature”. In addition to the impressive fossils and skeletons on display, my daughter was amazed to be able to see so many different butterflies and other insects and she took a particular interest in counting how many different pigeons she could spot in the bird section of the museum.

The skeleton of a dinosaur at the museum.

Some of the museum’s displays have been refreshed recently and there are now two large plesiosaur skeletons that you can marvel at, as well as Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur.

The architecture of the museum

It’s impossible to ignore the fabric of this museum. There’s something about the roof structure that makes me (and others) think about some of the impressive railway architecture that you see at stations like St Pancras, and it was a bit of an experiment sitting alongside the Victorian Neo-gothic stone architecture holding it up. I noticed as we went around that the pillars are all made of different materials, from across the country. The geological artefacts built into the museum itself.

A view across some of the display cases, showing off the architecture of teh building, in particular the columns.

My photos don’t do it proper justice, but this video is fantastic to give you a taste for what it’s like, and to show you some of the hidden features that you might otherwise overlook.

You can also learn more about the architecture of the Museum of Natural History on their website here.

Facilities at the museum

In addition to a small gift shop by the entrance there is also a cafe on level one of the museum building, looking down over the main hall. Toilets and baby changing facilities are also available. Whilst eating and drinking is not allowed in the museum, you can eat a picnic on the lawn outside the front of the building and whilst we were there many did this.

Out the front of the museum was also a lovely independent coffee van that sold hot and cold drinks as well as snacks. The queue of people who obviously work and study nearby suggests they were very good.

Visiting the Museum of Natural History

It is free to visit the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, but there is a suggested donation of £5 to help them cover their costs. You don’t need to book and more details can be found on the museum’s website.

Kids want to know more?

There are some family trails for the museum that you can either print out before you arrive, or they have printed versions at the information n desk in the museum. And if your little ones are impressed by the ichthyosaur and want to learn more about Mary Anning then the Little People, Big Dreams book on her is excellent. The museum’s website also details any family friendly activities that they put on in school holidays.

The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

A door at the back of the Museum of Natural History leads into the Pitt Rivers Museum and as you step through the doorway it is very obvious that you are entering somewhere with a very different feeling.

A double wooden door set into a stone wall. Through teh door you can just see some museum display cases. Above the door are the words "Pitt Rivers Collection" and this door leads from teh maim hall of teh Oxford University Museum of Natural History to the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Pitt Rivers Museum lacks the bright open space of its neighbour the Museum of Natural History and instead visitors are presented with quite a dark space that is absolutely rammed full of artefacts. Housing the University of Oxford’s archaeological and anthropological collections there is so much to see that it can be a bit daunting knowing where to look first.

An uncomfortable initial experience

As is traditional when visiting somewhere with an excited young child we didn’t really go round the museum in the suggested order and as a result of that I actually felt a bit uncomfortable about some of what I was looking at, until I found the relevant explanatory panels. The museum frankly accepts on one of its panels that “The history of the Pitt Rivers Museum is tied to British Imperial expansion and the colonial mandate to collect and classify objects from all over the world. The processes of colonial “collecting” were often inequitable and even violent towards those people being colonised.” They go on to talk about this uncomfortable past for the museum, and how they are working through the collections, how they are presented, and how they are explained through a present day lens. You can ream more about the museum’s commitment to change on their website.

My favourite exhibits

In a museum that contains so much it can be overwhelming to try to take it all in. There were a few exhibits though that did stick with me when we left.

A display case full of slightly creepy looking masks with a four year old girl looking on.

The hands of a four year old child as she draws a brightly coloured mask with coloured pencils.

My daughter loved the variety of masks that the museum displays, and when we stumbled into a school holiday drawing session for children it was a mask that she chose to design. Her’s wasn’t quite was freaky as some of the ones on display (thankfully!) but the museum also had some excellent drawing prompts for children of all ages to encourage them to look at the museum’s exhibits carefully.

A museum display case showing and explaining Chinese pigeon whistles which were attached to pigeons in China.

For me though whilst the pigeon whistles fascinated me, I was speechless at the sight of a man’s parka made of seal intestines from Alaska. Purchased by the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1908 it is described as such:

“The cuffs and hem of this parka feature a complex border of fourteen thin bands of parchment-like sealskin dyed red and black. These are over woven with fine caribou-hair embroidery in geometric patterns. There are more than 20,000 embroidery stitches in the border alone”

A museum display case showing off the parka that I have described. It has a hood and is of a relatively simple shape with arms. It looks like it more practical than decorative from a distance.

Let that just sink in. Over 20,000 embroidery stitches in the border alone. And made in or before 1908. So, no electric light. In Alaska, so probably dark for half the year. The work that must have gone into that absolutely fascinates me, and I’m left wondering why it was felt necessary to decorate a parka so elaborately. I wish I knew.

A close up of intricate embroidery on the border of the parka.

Facilities at the Pitt Rivers Museum

With the Pitt Rivers Museum connected to the Museum of Natural History it shares many of the same facilities. It has its own toilets and a small gift shop, but for refreshments you are directed to either the cafe in the Museum of Natural History or back outside for a picnic space and alternative coffee provision.

Wondering where else to visit?

Why not take a look at other places we have visited in Oxfordshire or the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire. You could also see which other museums we have visited around the world.

The Postal Museum and Mail Rail

August 11, 2023 by Penny Leave a Comment

London’s Postal Museum opened at its current Clerkenwell site in July 2017 and tells the story of the the postal system in the UK. One of the main attractions at the site is a 1km section of the Mail Rail underground train network that visitors can ride on. The museum prides itself in being an attraction for the whole family and it is packed with interactive exhibits that allow children to get very hands on. In addition there is an onsite role play area for children under the age of 8 called Sorted!

An image painted onto the side of a brick building showing an old fashioned Postman holding a letter which it looks like he is about to place into a post box. You can see a bi-plane flying in the sky in the picture and in the top right hand corner is a Penny Black Postage Stamp.

What’s at the Postal Museum?

Visits to the Postal Museum can broken down into three different sections.

Firstly there is the old underground rail system used by Royal Mail for transporting mail across central London; Mail Rail. Museum visitors can ride on the Mail Rail trains – converted to carry passengers instead of mail sacks – and during the 15 minute journey learn about the history of Mail Rail and why it was such a valuable system. Because of the way tickets work, Mail Rail is the first part of the museum that most visitors go to. You book a timed slot for riding on Mail Rail and this is what you book your museum tickets around.

In the same building as Mail Rail is Sorted! – a hands on role play area for children under the age of 8.

The main part of the museum is diagonally across the road from the building containing Mail Rail. That makes it sound further than it is, as in reality the road in question is only a small, quiet road so it does only take about a minute to walk between the two sites. This is where you find all the main exhibits and the “museum” part of The Postal Museum.

How Postal Museum tickets work

When you buy a ticket to The Postal Museum it gets you a ride on the Mail Rail and also entry to the main museum site. Your ticket allows you to revisit the museum as many times as you like in 12 months, but you can only ride on the Mail Rail once, on the day your ticket is first valid.

You book a time slot for riding on the Mail Rail and you’re asked to arrive 10 minutes before your scheduled time.

To visit Sorted! you need to buy a separate ticket per child and you have to book a time slot. Sorted! is an additional charge, and it is possible to visit Sorted! without going to any other part of the museum. If you are also visiting the museum then you get your Sorted! ticket at a discounted price.

Mail Rail

Seen by many as the main attraction at The Postal Museum, Mail Rail is something not to be missed. A 2ft narrow gauge driverless underground system originally ran for 10.5km with 8 stations. This allowed mail to be moved around London far faster than doing so at street level. The railway ran from its inception in 1927 until it finally closed in 2003.

When the original railway as mothballed, much of the original infrastructure and rolling stock was kept and that now enables visitors to be taken along a 1km section of the route in adapted versions of the trains that now carry passengers instead of mail bags, and have drivers at the front. During a 15 minute journey visitors are told the history of the line and in a couple of points the train stops to allow films to be projected on to the walls, showing what the railway used to be like, and explaining the role it played in carrying mail across the capital.

Once you’ve completed your ride on the train itself, there’s a lovely small exhibition space containing artefacts from the railway. It’s clear from the exhibits that people who work on the Mail Rail have been heavily involved in creating this exhibition, and it’s lovely to see things like a homemade engineer’s toolbox that one man created from an old decommissioned carriage. The labelled tobacco tins containing various small parts reminded me so much of my dad’s garage.

A picture of the top of an old Mail Rail carriage that was converted into an engineers trolly by someone who worked there. You can see an assortment of bits and bobs including a tin of swarfega, leads for a multimeter and an array of old tobacco tins

The whole experience is fascinating and a must do for anyone who loves something a bit geeky. The museum’s website provides some great details about the practicalities of riding the Mail Rail and accessibility information.

There is a gift shop located in the Mail Rail building.

The main Postal Museum

Once you’ve been on the Mail Rail you head to the main museum building across the road. This is where the main exhibits that make up the museum are. Although the total floor space isn’t huge, there is a wonderful collection of artefacts from the first letters and stamps, right through to the latest ones produced with King Charles III on them.

A display showing a variety of old Post Office and Royal Mail advertising posters at the Postal Museum.

The history of the Postal system in the UK is fascinating and, even in these days of email and social media, it clearly comes across about what a crucial part of the infrastructure the postal system was. It made me feel a bit sad to realise just how much we’ve lost really. Seeing in particular the adorable little Post Bus really brought it home, as in a time when rural bus services have been cut more than ever before something like a Post Bus network would help so many.

A very cute and cheery looking red and yellow Royal Mail Post Bus.

For kids visiting the museum there was so much that was hands on for them to touch and play with, that it easily kept all three entertained in different ways. The activity book was a nice touch as it featured things that all ages could get involved in, whilst also being quite educational as well.

There is a small cafe in the foyer area of the museum along with a gift shop.

Sorted!

In addition to the main museum there is a role play area for children aged 8 and under located in the same building as the Mail Rail, called Sorted! You need to book a 45 minute slot for sorted and this can be done via the museum’s website. It is possible to either book just to go to Sorted! or to add a visit on to buying museum tickets. If you do the latter then it only costs a couple of pounds per child for your Sorted! visit.

Sorted! gives children a huge number of role play opportunities, all around a postal theme. Our four year old thoroughly enjoyed it, in particular because she could dress for some of the roles.

A four year old girl wearing a child sized Royal Mail high-via jacket is hauling a play postal sack up after it has been raised to first floor level on a pulley system. Just next to where she is doing this you can see a red slide leading downstairs.

What we thought

We absolutely loved the Postal Museum. This was actually our second visit, but the first with children in tow. Things have changed a bit in the years since we first came, but actually coming again with kids made us realise just how child friendly it is. There was so much for all three kids to interact with that they all had great fun. The pneumatic tubes were a huge hit – not just for our kids, but all the ones we saw playing with them. The children also enjoyed quite a few of the other interactive exhibits, as well as being interested in quite a lot of what they saw there.

A blonde four year old girl smiling at the camera whilst wearing a vintage style GPO uniform of coat and hat, remade in a child's size.

The kids activity booklet that they were given when they arrived was also really well put together. Some things that were easy enough for the four year old to do without much assistance, but other bits that the 13 year old also enjoyed trying to find as we went around.

How to find The Postal Museum

The Postal Museum isn’t right next to any tube stops, but please don’t let that put you off at all. We travelled to Farringdon station (Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City, National Rail and Elizabeth Line) and walked from there in less than 15 minutes. And that was with a 4 year old who doesn’t always necessarily walk in a straight line! Most of the streets you walk along are quite small and quiet, especially on a weekend.

For more detailed directions to get there try using the TfL Journey Planner and enter “The Postal Museum” as your destination. That way the planner will show you buses and walking instructions too.

Preparing kids to visit The Postal Museum

When we visited there was a fantastic activity pack for children which had them spotting things around the museum. This, and quite a few of the information panels for children around the museum, are all based around the character of The Jolly Postman. The sight of him, and a picture of kids’ other favourite postman, Postman Pat, just inside the entrance to the museum was enough to convince my four year old that this was a place that would interest her. If your little one isn’t familiar with The Jolly Postman before your visit then it may well be worth introducing them.

On their website the museum have done a huge amount of work with Ambitious about Autism to produce a series of resources to help support autistic and neurodiverse visitors to the museum. This includes visual stories and pre-visit films. At the museum itself we saw a basket of ear defenders available near the queue for the Rail Mail and they also have sensory bags available to borrow, along with lanyards which can help staff identify visitors that may require additional support.

Want to read more?

Why not take a look at other museums we have visited, or see what else we’ve enjoyed doing in London.

RAF Museum, Hendon, London

January 15, 2020 by Penny Leave a Comment

London can seem awash with museums, but I’m not sure that all the ones away from the centre are as well known. That certainly seems to be the case with the RAF Museum in Hendon. It may be out in Zone 4, but it’s only a 30 minute tube ride, and not far from the M1 if you’re travelling by car.

For anyone with an interest in aviation, military or just technology in general you won’t be disappointed with the RAF Museum, and there’s so much to see and do there that it’s very easy to spend a full day at the museum.

For those that may have visited the museum before, it is worth pointing out that there has been quite a re-vamp over the last few years with the museum reopening in 2018 to celebrate the RAF’s 100th anniversary.

What is there to see at the RAF Museum?

Our visit to the RAF Museum took in the newest part of the museum’s offering – Hangar 1 – which focuses on the first 100 years of the RAF. With lots of real life accounts of what it is like to work and live as part of the RAF’s family it is a great way to start your visit to the museum.

There’s plenty to read and look at, but for kids (large and small) there are also several hands on games to help you get a feel for the skills needed by the RAF.

This hangar also features the RAF First to the Future gallery which uses simulators and other interactive exhibits to help visitors really get an understanding of what it is like to be a Hawk pilot or a drone operator. My older kids both had an absolute ball in this part of the museum.

With only half a day at the museum we didn’t have time to visit all the hangars, but did spend an enjoyable hour or more in hangars 3, 4 and 5 that no only house the indoor picnic space (brilliant if you’re trying to have a winter day out on a budget) but also everything that comes under the broad heading of War in the Air 1918 – 1980.

With separate sections on the Battle of Britain, Bomber Command, Helicopters and Wings over Water it really does cover a huge range in the same way that the RAF itself does. My kids’ favourite part of these hangars though is always the section that houses a reconstruction of an aircraft factory that was hit during a bombing raid. Not only does it open up an interesting conversation with the kids about where the enemy might target, but my kids are always super excited about the fact that there’s running water to depict a water pipe having been hit!

RAF Themed Kids Playground

With only half a day at the museum we simply didn’t have time to see everything, but it is worth mentioning the playground area. My kids always need somewhere to let off a bit of steam and there is a brilliant RAF themed outdoor play area – think planes and helicopters, as well as a model of one of the nearby buildings on the site. It’s nicely fenced off to keep it safe, lots to do for all ages, and for the parents the cafe with outdoor tables is right next door! You can tell a parent was involved in the planning of that.

Practicalities of visiting

One of the best bits about the RAF Museum is that it is free to visit. They do ask for donations and you do have to pay for car parking – but the charges for it are very reasonable, especially when you consider that you’re not being hit by a high entry fee.

If you’re planning a visit to the RAF Museum in Hendon there’s a brilliant page on their website about getting there. There’s also plenty of information on the site about the different hangars and what they contain, as well as details on exhibitions and special events.

If you’re not near London, did you know that they also have a separate RAF Museum in Cosford in Shropshire?

Want to read more?

If you’re looking for places to go on a family day out, or museums to visit then make sure you take a look at the other places we’re written about here on Penny Travels.

Disclaimer: We visited the RAF Museum in London in January 2020. We did so of our own free will and were not asked in any way to write about our visit.

British Dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum at Tring

April 8, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

I think it fair to say that most people know about the Natural History Museum in London. It’s world famous. The dinosaurs there, especially “Dippy” the diplodocus who was there for over one hundred years, have been the reason for so many children (and adults) wanting to visit. There are about 80 million items in the museum’s collection and there’s something there to entertain and fascinate anyone with an interest in natural history.

What isn’t so well known, is that the Natural History Museum has a smaller second museum in the Hertfordshire market town of Tring. The Natural History Museum at Tring was originally the private museum of Lionel Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild and it is located in the grounds of the former Rothschild family home of Tring Park. If you’re at all local to Tring, you probably know of the Rothschild family from one of their other current houses, Waddesdon Manor, which is currently open to the public, under the care of the National Trust.

Natural History Museum at Tring

The Natural History Museum at Tring houses one of the country’s finest collections of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and insects and there’s no wonder that so many local children simply know it as the “animal museum”. The history of how it came to be is fascinating, and the museum has a room dedicated to Rothschild and the life that he dedicated to the study of animals. At the age of seven he declared to his parents that he was going to “make a museum” and he did just that. There’s a short version of what he did over on the museum’s website, but the detail provided at the museum itself is well worth a read.

The museum has five other galleries with permanent exhibitions in which range from a zebroid foal (a hybrid between a horse and a zebra) to a whole selection of domestic dogs. If you have young children it is particularly lovely for them to visit and be able to get up close to so many animals, especially as many of the display cases are right down to the floor, meaning that children can see many exhibits for themselves without having to be lifted up. Gallery 1 has a beautiful vintage feel to it and walking around you can easily feel like you’re back in a different era.

British Dinosaurs

The reason for my most recent visit (and the second visit for four month old Tube Stop Baby – which shows how much we like the place!) was to see their most recent temporary exhibition in Gallery 2 – British Dinosaurs.

Photograph kindly provided by Natural History Museum, Tring and copyright The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

The museum in London may be world famous for their dinosaur collection, but this exhibition focusses on British Dinosaurs, and the ones that still live among us in our gardens and parks. As you enter the gallery the first thing that hits you is the large map on the floor, showing where dinosaurs are known to have lived. My kids knew all about the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, thanks to a recent holiday with their Dad, but they were surprised to find out that dinosaurs were known to have been in so many other parts of the country.

In Tring children can measure themselves against the femur and tibia of an Iguanodon (one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered). They can see the massive Baryonyx walkeri skull and think about how huge this dinosaur could be by looking at backbone specimens that were found in Surrey. Their teeth can be compared to Megalosaurus bucklandii teeth found in Oxfordshire.

There are also a couple of interactive exhibits that my kids learnt loads from. Any excuse to touch a touch screen and they’ll take it!

What we thought

At 6 and 8, Little Miss C and Master C really enjoyed the British Dinosaurs exhibition, as well as wondering around the rest of the museum again. They also seemed to learn plenty too, especially LMC who spent quite a while reading about all the dinosaur exhibits.

I’m not going to lie, if your children are expecting to see huge dinosaur skeletons towering over them, then you should head for London instead, but as part of a bigger visit to the museum it’s a brilliant opportunity to learn about the dinosaurs that used to live here. The kids enjoyed the opportunity to touch a dinosaur tooth and to think about just how old it was in comparison to their ages. They also made a point of finding the reptile skin I’m gallery 6 so that they could get a feel for what a dinosaur would have felt like.

The kids have been going to the museum since they were very young, but they still enjoy going back. Little Miss C even did a “Roars and Snores” event recently with Brownies where they spent an evening in the museum learning about the exhibits, dissecting owl pellets and under standing how taxidermy is done. They then all slept on the floor next to some of the exhibits. She did say it was a tad scary to wake in the night with a deer peering down at her!

Visiting the Natural History Museum at Tring

The British Dinosaurs exhibition is running at Tring from 5 April to 11 October 2019. The Natural History Museum is located at The Walter Rothschild building, Akeman Street, Tring, Hertfordshire, HP23 6AP and is a short walk from the centre of Tring. There is a car park on site, but it can get very busy, so you are sometimes better off parking else where and walking. Entry to the museum, including the British Dinosaurs exhibition, is free. For full detail of the museum’s opening hours, please look at their website.

The whole museum is accessible with a pushchair, you just need to go in via the entrance off the car park, rather than the main entrance which has steps leading up to it. There is a cafe on site that has recently had a revamp. I’m told it is very good, but every time I have tried to visit the queue has been out of the door! I’m taking that as a sign that it is as good as I’ve been told.

A final word

My final word would be to say that when you go, please go and look at the Emperor Penguins and work out why the one on the left looks so strange. A member of staff explained it to me when we were there last week and it’s a fascinating story. Make sure you ask them if you can’t work it out for yourself.

Disclaimer: We were guests at a preview opening of the British Dinosaurs exhibition at Tring and the kids were given a vast quantity of bread sticks and crisps to much whilst there. All opinions remain my own.