Roaming with The Robertsons

The fourth day of our holiday, once we had settled back into reality after the high of spending two days with the giraffes, took us on a trip back in time to the Black Country Living Museum . This is an open air museum that has reconstructed houses, shops and workshops spanning the Industrial Revolution up until post-war times. We weren't sure what to expect from our visit but have to say that we were very pleasantly surprised. As we visited in the week during term time, there were a lot of school groups around but very few other visitors which meant that there was plenty of chance to explore. What made the visit for us was that all of the members of staff were forthcoming with information when you entered a house or shop which helped bring their stories alive. We also made the most of the opportunity to listen to various talks and watch demonstrations including a lesson in the school and watching a short black and white comedy in the cinema. We also took a trip to T. Cook's Sw...

As previously mentioned, the main reason we came on this holiday to the West Midlands was to go to West Midlands Safari Park where we had booked an overnight stay in one of the giraffe lodges . We last went there in 2023 when Shannon had booked the red panda cottage for Nicole's birthday, and had since been wanting to return to stay with her favourite animals. We managed to book the lodge as part of a 20% off deal making it much more affordable, however we still think that a trip is great value for money.  Our day started with just a short drive from our AirBnB to the safari park. We aimed to arrive for opening time to make the most of our two days in the park. As lodge guests, there is an allocated parking area close to the entrance and you can check in on arrival to collect all the information relating to your stay and your wrist bands for entry / exit to the park and the rides. Once checked in at the lodge reception, where we were made to feel very welcome, we made the decision...

When people asked us where we were going on our summer holiday this year, I'm not sure they were that impressed when we said 'Birmingham' or the 'West Midlands'. However, there was a very good reason why we were heading to this area of the country, and that was to have a special 48 hours staying with the giraffes at West Midlands Safari Park. When we previously embarked on a similar trip, we headed down on the morning of the first day but found that this meant we didn't arrive until mid-morning, so we decided to do things differently this time and sandwich our visit within a few days away. Therefore, to start our trip, we headed to one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Birmingham area - Cadbury World. This is somewhere that Nicole had been a few times as a child but was a first for Shannon.  We had booked onto an early afternoon time slot at Cadbury World, so after setting off from home we made our way to a National Trust property for a quick look a...

Before we headed home, we had time for a stop at another National Trust property. The one we chose was The Children's Country House at Sudbury , where we were both able to enjoy the house and gardens, and also visit their incredible museum of children's toys. There were toys from across the decades and, quite scarily, many toys from our childhood being displayed as parts of history. It was a great way to reconnect with childhood memories at the end of our trip.  Once we had enjoyed the property, we grabbed a bite to eat at The Sudbury Stables . We both chose to have a toastie, Nicole opting for the Goats Cheese toastie and Shannon the Underdog toastie, along with a drink. A word of advice if wanting to visit here, which we would absolutely recommend, is to book a table as when we arrived it was very busy. Once we had enjoyed our lunch, it was time to head home after a very busy and tiring few days to put our feet up! 

Our activity of day 4 was the reason our trip was extended as it turned out that we wouldn't have been able to visit the Heights of Abraham easily on the days we had initially booked for due to the tourist seasons. We got up promptly and headed to the attraction ready for it to open at 10am to make sure we made the most of our day. The Heights of Abraham is accessible via a cable car, which was much scarier than we both anticipated. We managed to visit on a day where it was incredibly foggy, therefore the views on the way up left much to be desired, but once we were at the top and the fog cleared the views were spectacular. We wanted to make sure we had time to do everything available, therefore we headed straight away to The Great Masson Cavern. We were led through the cavern and found out all about the formation of caverns at the Heights of Abraham in an interesting and engaging way. After this, we explored the Long View and Wombles exhibitions before finding ourselves somewhere...

As we had decided to extend our stay for a couple of days beyond our originally intended duration, we managed to have time for a compulsory visit to a zoo - Peak Wildlife Park . This ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. The park was reasonably small and it was possible to explore all the animals within a few hours, but there was a great mixture of animals commonly seen in zoos and those that are more rare. to find Our favourites included the polar bears, arctic foxes, red pandas, and the meerkats (due to them having a deckchair to sit on!). It was also unique in providing a large number of walkthrough experiences, which included the lemurs, penguins, red squirrels (unfortunately we didn't actually see any of these) and the wallaby's. Shannon decided that she wanted to have a go at feeding the wallaby's, so for a couple of pounds we purchased a packet of food which allowed her to get hands on and close up with the animals.  After leaving the Peak Wildlife Park, ...