London Zoo

The London Zoo in Regents Park is an astonishing £17.50 entry fee, per adult. A child aged 3 -5 £13.50. A discretionary £1.60 donation per person is added and car parking is £11.00. For the average family of four thats £79.40 to get into the zoo. This is the off-peak rate, it goes up in summer. Lions and tigers and prices Oh my!

Western Lowland Gorillas

London Zoo is “bringing down the bars” Theres no cages. Its all glass. You can get incredible close and it feels like theres nothing between you and Bobby, the biggest Gorilla of them all, 600 pounds of him. Born in the wild he still loves to beat his chest and mate.

Gorilla Kingdom is the flagship exhibit

You actually go into the monkey enclosure and walk through it. No glass at all! Rather perplexing after the carnage at Longleat Safari Park.

black capped squirrel monkey

But these little guys are no trouble at all, you are advised to keep fingers close to your body.
Theres about 20 of them scampering around. I feed em a couple of Farley's rusks.

kiddies zoo

Infact you can walk into most of the "exhibits". Not the lions and tigers of course. The poor lions haven't got used to the glass yet and charge at it roaring.

bugs life

Its exhausting chasing after Thames, looking at the animals. 4PM we call it a day. Didn't see half the zoo. Will have to come back another day. Gulp.

The return of T-Rex

Natural History Museum

They say you should always get back on the horse that threw you. For a while now I wanted Thames to have another go at that terrifying T-rex in Natural History Museum that scared him so much last year.

command vehicle

The exhibition starts nicely enough, with a few bones and plant eaters

....and smaller cute ones.

Inevitably descends into shock and awe tactics

could do with a dust

no ones remembers "smaller" Albert

And so we come to it. The super sensing, all moving, all roaring, blood dripping, 8 meter high, computer controlled animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex. Thames' little body is trembling as I carry him into the darkened room. I am reminded of another saying, once bitten twice shy. But hes six months older now and loves his dinosaur's. He still covers his ears, the loud roars and rumbling, but is more excited than scared and is all smiles. I try and film it but its to dark for my handy cam.




These short clips give you a feel for it. If you havent been, just go. Stand at the back screaming.

blue zone

Of course theres lots of other things to look at; mammals, including a life size blue whale, fishes, reptiles, human biology, thats just the first floor. When you have had enough looking you can do some touching. Down in the basement is the excellent "Investigate" room

dem bones

These aren't toys, these aren't bits of plastic, these are real artifacts from the museums vaults that you can get your hands on, play with, touch taste and smell.

dinosaur fossils millions of years old, careful

Amazingly I get to hold a meteorite from outer space, it weighed nearly 3 lbs, incredibly heavy for such a small thing, as old as the earth its self.

a real meteorite that fell to earth

This really takes the cake. The Investigate room takes going to a museum to a whole new level. We all had a fantastic time. Almost as good as the dinosaurs, almost. Rooaaaarrrr.

Alice Holt Forest

Britain was once completed covered in trees. Alan Titchmarsh never tires of telling us this, as if we should feel guilty somehow for betraying our boreal roots. There's now only a few pockets of forest left. Alice Holt is a "woodland park" with marked trails for all the family to enjoy.



The Habitat trail is only 0.7 miles, takes about an hour to get round, has animal sculptures to climb and is very muddy.

15 ft oak owl


15ft? owl?

The forestry commission doesn't have much to do these days, litter patrol and whittling demonstrations.

fine fine whittling

dragonfly's world

I now know what you mean Mr Titchmarsh. Imagine earth restored to her former beauty,
stately trees fill the land, birdsong fills the air, deep blue skies complete the symphony.

An ancient forest on a sunny day

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/

Southend-on-sea

Sunday morning, January, mid winter, its freezing cold. I'm 1 mile out to sea, not in a boat, but still on "land". We are on Southend pier, the longest pier in the world, at 1.3 miles long.


It takes about 20 mins to walk to the end. There's an RNLI lifeboat station, a café and a large sun deck. Why-O Why? I have to ask...did they build it so long? Because fresh air is good for ones health, it was seen as a way of getting all those filthy Londoners out to the sea side.

very windy

Built in 1830, originally with oak piles, its survived a lot; fires, boat crashes, 2 World Wars, braving the elements and all mother nature can throw at it, and the relentless bounding of the tide. It also has 7 million visitors a year traipsing up and down it.



It certainly blows the cob webs away. Its exhilarating standing 1.3 miles out to sea with the wind in your hair and the spray in your face. We took the train back.

"the Pier is Southend, Southend is the Pier"

finally, out of the wind

Pleasure Island, a narrow amusement park, sits at the base of the pier. I find Brighton pier can be a bit seedy at times, but Pleasure Island has wholesome family fun in bucket n spades loads. We shun the rollercoaster's in favour of the smaller "mini" Thomas Tank Engine type rides, that stay safely on the ground.














The Sealife Adventure Aquarium is the real reason we are here.
Sharks, rays, Lion Fish, Moral eels, they are all here, hours of excitement. New for us, a big tank of Terrapins, about 20 of them swimming and splashing about.

in the zone, cant wait to take him fishing

We have a run on the beach. Its to cold to paddle, but nice to feel the sand under your feet. There's 6 blue flag beaches stretching 7 miles.
Southend on Sea is a brilliant day out, its only 40 miles from London connected by 1 very straight dual carriageway, 2 railway lines, and an airport.



With the beach, the pier and the aquarium we had a great time. Its also very good value for money. The train on the pier is £3.00, the Aquarium £6.25, (half the price of London Aquarium)
mini rides in the adventure playground are .50p and accompanying adult free.
I forgot my digi camera so bought a disposable one, £5.99, Boots processing of film £4.99, copy to CD .99p = £11.97, by the far the most expensive item of the day.
But the photos have that grainy "old holiday snaps" look about them.
Good memories of a great day out = priceless, not a drop of rain all day= miracle

Donation to RLNI= 1 sandwhich crust

Longleat Safari Park

I am not a big fan of zoos. But kids love animals and a safari park is the place to see them. It takes an hour and half to drive around Longleat. You sit in your own car getting attached by all kinds of beasts.

lock your windows and doors

One of the worst things I have done in a car was drive through Monkey Jungle. The car is swamped by monkeys intent on doing as much damage as possible to my nice new Picasso. We lose the rear wind screen wiper, the Desire badge, some rubber trim and the antenna gets chewed to bits.

The Rhesus monkey, common name; little buggers

When a 50 pound male monkey jumps from the car in front onto your windscreen you sure know about it. Snarling and bearing teeth he then tries to rip of your wipers.

didn't bring my rifle

I thought the Picasso was a big car, until I parked next to a Rinho.

what do we do if they charge?

We had been warned about the lions, they can smell babies a mile off and came to investigate. Concentrating on driving I gave the camera to Thames.

particularly fine black mane

But the tigers are the best. Three big cats. Walking around, one crossed the road right in front of us. The tiger enclosure is very big and full of trees, its so good to see them running around chasing squirrels.

three Amur (Siberian) tigers

Science Museum

The Natural History Museum is right next door to the Science Museum is right next door to the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are all free entry and you could easily spend a week in each one. I reckon this is part of the reason so many people visit London.

early start to beat the crowds

Its also London fashion week and there's a sale at Harrods. All this at South Kensington.

I wanna see Dinosaurs!

The terrifyingly life- like animatronic T Rex "senses" its prey and turns and roars when you get near it.
This was a bit much for wee Thames.

I dont wanna see anymore Dinosaurs!

The excellent Science Museum has the excellent Water Garden and excellent Launch Pad.

Lots of hands on stuff for kids to do.


The girls having coffee.

Dino Park

Dinosaur Park in Crystal Palace was built in 1854. Visionary Sir Joseph Paxton didn't have a lot to work from, it being 6 years before Darwin published his Origin of Species. The resulting life size statues are all out of proportion, with grotesquely large heads and feet and way to many teeth. For a 2 year old kid, this is just Awesome.

Its free and has just had a £70million refurb.

These where the very first 3D dinosaur sculptures in the world.

Tara takes it all in her stride

Pick your own

In Britain during British Summer Time, people eat Strawberries everyday. And everyone knows the best strawberries are the ones you pick yourself.

Row upon row of juicy strawberries can be picked all summer long. July saw a bit of rain.

Strawberries grow very close to the ground, short people are the best at harvesting them.

Stemless plant belonging to Genus Fragaria, the rose family.

Thames was our chief taster, he'd take a bite of each one before putting it in the bucket.

small discount

After handful and handful of sweet strawberries, bitter refreshment is required.

patacake and a pint