Days Out

Jorvik Viking Centre

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A screenshot of the home page of the Jorvik Viking Centre web site

Last week, we took our nine-year-old for their first visit to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. Now I grew up in York, and so have been many times over the years, but the last time Christine and I went was in 2012.

Jorvik is undoubtedly one of York’s best known tourist attractions, having opened celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. However, I’m writing about it now because, until the 23rd February, Jorvik is dressed up for winter.

Recreation of Jorvik ride

The main part of Jorvik sees visitors sitting in carriages that move around a recreation of York, or ‘Jorvik’ as it was known in the time of the Vikings. The carriages seat six, and feature a commentary in multiple languages. This part takes around 15 minutes, and the carriages rotate to highlight different parts of the recreated city. The buildings are laid out roughly as they were found when the site was excavated in the 1970s.

Before you go on the ride, there’s a glass floor to walk over which has a recreation of that 1970s archaeological dig. Previously, the site had been a factory for Cravens Confectionery, a now defunct sweet and chocolate manufacturer (alongside Rowntrees, now part of Nestlé, and Terry’s, now part of Mondelez). Local planning rules in York mean that an archaeological dig must take place whenever foundations are to be dug, and this large site resulted in a five year excavation that unveiled many artefacts of York’s past. Indeed, once the ride has finished, you can view some of the finds that were excavated, and find out more about how the Vikings settled in York.

As mentioned, Jorvik has been dressed up for winter, so at present there’s snow on all the recreated buildings and on the ground. If you’ve been to Jorvik recently, maybe give it another visit as it looks very different at present. I didn’t take any photos on my visit this time unfortunately.

Accessibility

Jorvik is accessed down some stairs, although there is a lift. If you’re a wheelchair user, you’ll need to book in advance by phone (not online), as only one of the carriages has been adapted for a wheelchair and the staff will need to give you a specific timeslot. However, all the carriages offer a hearing loop for hearing aid users, and subtitles for the commentary. Famously, Jorvik recreates the smells of Viking York and this is worth being prepared for if you’re sensitive to unusual scents. There’s an extensive accessibility page on Jorvik’s web site, detailing what you can expect and how they can help you.

The days of there being massive queues for Jorvik snaking around the Coppergate Shopping Centre are mostly gone, as you now need to pre-book. You should do this online if you can; you can book on your phone on arrival, but be prepared to have to come back later. We turned up without pre-booking and had to return after 45 minutes. However, the following day, there were signs up saying that all time slots were booked up and no more bookings were being taken that day.

A Max card discount is available.

Bolling Hall Museum, Bradford

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A photo of the outside of the Bolling Hall Museum in Bradford. It's a stone-built stately home.

Last month, we met up with a couple of friends to go to the Bolling Hall Museum in Bradford. Now, long time readers of this blog will know that I lived in Bradford between 2002 and 2010, and still work there, so surely I must have been here loads of times.

Nope. This was the first time I’ve been.

Bolling Hall is an old stately home that has been altered many times over the years. Parts of it date back to the 14th century, and in the early 20th century it was passed to what would eventually become Bradford Council, who run it as one of their museums. As various parts of the building date from different times, there is a variety of architectural styles on show.

Bolling Hall overlooks Bowling Park, to the south of the city centre, and is in what is now mostly the residential area of West Bowling.

A photo of a piano that belonged to Frederick Delius

Inside, the rooms have been mostly laid out as they would have been in Georgian times, including the kitchen and several bedrooms. There’s also a small exhibition about Bolling Hall’s role in the English Civil War; its owners at the time supported the Royalists, whereas the wider Bradford area backed the Parliamentarians.

As with most council-run museums, Bolling Hall is home to various objects in Bradford Council’s collection. This includes the first piano owned by Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius.

It’s not a big museum, and we spent about an hour there. Whilst there are gardens outside, these were mostly roped off when we went.

Amusingly, it was me who created its listing on Foursquare, thirteen years ago, so it was nice to be able to finally check in there.

Accessibility

Being a very old building that has been altered several times, accessibility is not great. If you’re unable to manage stairs, then you can use an accessible entrance to see some of the ground floor rooms, but there isn’t a lift and the upstairs rooms are on different levels.

Bolling Hall Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Entry is free. Parking is available on site, and it’s well-signposted. It’s served by bus 635 from Bradford city centre.

Spooky Skeletons at Lotherton Hall

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A photo of Lotherton Hall. It's a pebble-dashed stately home

At the weekend, I took our eight-year-old to Lotherton Hall and Estate near Leeds. We’ve been many times before (the last time I wrote about a visit was 2016), but this was the first time that we’d been during its Halloween event, Spooky Skeletons. Indeed, as Lotherton isn’t far from York, I’ve been coming since I was young. One of my earliest memories was one of my primary school teachers being on the receiving end of a flying bird’s defecation, which, when you’re not yet ten-years-old, is hilarious.

A photo of the inside of Lotherton Hall, showing two couches facing each other.

Spooky Skeletons

As well as being the first time that I’d been to their Halloween event, this was also the first time that I had been inside the actual hall. All the downstairs rooms have been decorated with lots of skeletons – some rather anatomically questionable – and there’s a general theme of a seaside funfair of the undead as you go between the rooms. It’s not as opulent as Castle Howard’s Christmas events (we went in 2022) and clearly done on a local authority budget, but there was plenty of whimsy.

Outside, there were plenty more skeletons, and the theme was fairytale characters. For example, Robin Hood (with an arrow in his mouth), Peter Pan and Hook, and Sleeping Beauty (both before and after pricking her finger). If you’ve ever been to Lotherton’s Christmas events, it uses the same woodland walk but there were skeletons all over the grounds, including the formal gardens.

Spooky Skeletons is running until this Sunday (the 3rd November).

A zookeeper feeding a group of humboldt penguins at Lotherton Wildlife World

Lotherton Wildlife World

When I was growing up, the main reason to visit Lotherton was the Bird Garden, which had a wide collection of different species of birds. A few years ago, this became Lotherton Wildlife World, and now has a wider range of animals, including tapir, capybara, wallabies and a nocturnal area with bats and cloud rats. Some parts are a little run down, but it’s also clear to see that work is ongoing to renovate it. We were lucky enough to see feeding time for the humboldt penguins.

Accessibility

Lotherton is normally open every day. It’s not far from Junction 47 of the M1 and there’s plenty of car parking. Public transport is more of an issue; the nearest bus stop is in the village of Aberford and then it’s a 20 minute walk. Micklefield is the nearest railway station and has regular trains from Leeds towards York and Selby, but again, it’s a very long walk.

The site is mostly flat, although there are some uneven surfaces. A changing places toilet is available. Tickets are slightly cheaper if you book in advance online. A Max card discount is available.

The Museum of Liverpool

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A photo of the outside of the Museum of Liverpool

So, after we caught the Ferry across the Mersey, we had a couple of hours in Liverpool before we needed to head back. And seeing as the Museum of Liverpool is right by the Gerry Marsden Ferry Terminal, we decided to pop in.

All three of us have been before, back in Summer 2016, and if you’re good at maths then you’ll be able to work out how old our eight-year-old was then. So whilst it wasn’t technically their first visit, it might as well have been.

Like the name of the museum suggests, it tells the history of Liverpool, starting at pre-historic times and up to the present day. Some of the exhibits may only be of interest to locals, where these focus on specific areas of Liverpool, but for the most part there’s something for those who only know Liverpool for The Beatles and football.

Railways

Of particular interest to me is the story of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, which used to snake its way past Liverpool’s dockyards along the waterfront. Built in 1893, it suffered extensive damage during the second world war and was demolished in the 1950s. But it was the world’s first elevated railway, one of the first electric railways at a time when steam engines ruled, and one of the first to use modern colour-light railway signalling. In the museum, the one surviving wooden railway carriage is available to look at, on a recreation of the metal structure that carried the railway.

A photo of the steam engine Lion inside the Museum of Liverpool

This carriage isn’t the only rail vehicle inside the museum, and a large part of the ground floor is home to the steam engine Lion. It was built in 1838 for the then relatively new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was the world’s first intercity railway, to haul freight.

Whilst entry to the museum is free, some special exhibitions charge. The current exhibition is the Holly Johnson story – Holly Johnson probably being best known as the lead singer of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Which would have interested me but probably not our eight-year-old.

Accessibility

As mentioned, entry is free apart from some exhibitions. It’s closed on Mondays, unless it’s school holidays, but open every other day of the week.

Being a new-ish museum, Changing Places and gender-neutral toilets are available, and there are lifts to all floors. Sunday mornings are dedicated quiet times in the museum.

James Street station on Merseyrail is the closest and is around a 5 minute walk away; the main Liverpool Lime Street station is about 20 minutes walk. It’s also close to the ferry terminal, so if you’re driving, you could do what we do and park there, and then catch the ferry.

Taking a ferry across the Mersey

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A photo of the Royal Iris ferry on the River Mersey in Liverpool

So, I mentioned in our visit to Eureka Science + Discovery that it’s located in the Seacombe Ferry Terminal in the Wirral, and that a typical visit lasts 2-3 hours. Therefore, that gave us a spare afternoon, and our eight-year-old decided that a ferry journey was in order.

The Mersey Ferries fill a double role. At peak times on weekdays, they offer a fast 10 minute crossing every 20 minutes for commuters. But at weekends and weekday daytimes, they take a less direct route and offer a 50 minute River Explorer Cruise with a commentary pointing out major riverside landmarks. And yes, you’ll get to hear that Gerry and the Pacemakers song too.

Boarding in Wirral, the first part of the journey took around half an hour. You pass the other ferry terminal in Wirral at Woodside, adjacent to the U-Boat Story museum – both are currently closed for renovations, but Christine and I visited in 2010. You then pass where the (much larger) ferries to Ireland depart, before the boat performs a u-turn and passes Liverpool Arena and the Albert Dock. You then arrive at the Gerry Marsden Ferry Terminal (yup) in Liverpool.

The return journey to Wirral heads down the Mersey as far as the under-construction Everton Stadium, before again turning and passing Wallasey and onwards back to the Seacombe terminal.

The ferry we travelled on was the Royal Iris of the Mersey. Built in 1959, it’s seen a lot and various bands and artists have performed on it over the years – Elvis Costello, The Searchers, the aforementioned Gerry and the Pacemakers, and, yes, The Beatles. The on-board interior is rather sparse, but there’s a café which, thanks to a loophole (see this Tom Scott video), can sell alcohol without a license.

Currently the Royal Iris is the only ferry in use, but a new one is being built, to launch in 2026 – and it’s being built locally in Birkenhead.

Our eight-year-old really enjoyed the return trip. It’s not cheap – around £13 for adults and £8 for children. The ferries are accessible though as you can board and alight using ramps, and there accessible toilets on board.

Visiting the ‘other’ Eureka in Wirral

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A photo of the entrance to Eureka Science + Discovery in Wirral

Since 1992, Halifax has been home to Eureka, the National Children’s Museum. But in 2022, a ‘new’ Eureka opened in Wirral, just across the River Mersey from Liverpool, and I took our eight-year-old to visit a couple of weeks ago.

As we live near Halifax, we’ve taken our eight-year-old to Eureka a few times over the years, so we wanted to see what the new museum was like.

Eureka Science + Discovery

The ‘new’ Eureka is branded ‘Eureka Science + Discovery’, and is aimed at slightly older children. The original Eureka was groundbreaking at the time of its opening by being very hands on, when most other contemporary museums locked their exhibits away inside glass cabinets with ‘do not touch’ signs everywhere. Eureka Science + Discovery carries on with the same ethos, and there’s lots of things to touch and interact with. But there’s also more to read, in line with its older target age group of 7-14 year-olds.

Downstairs, you can learn about the body, and there’s an auditorium at the back. Upstairs there are two zones – one focussing on nature, and the other about science, especially in the home. Through a separate entrance is The Burrow, which is a play area for the under-7s and is included in the ticket, and of course there’s a shop and a café – again the café has a separate entrance and is open to the public.

We spent a full morning at the museum. Older kids may get more out of it, if they take the time to read the displays, but allow 2-3 hours for a visit.

A photo of the inside of Eureka Science + Discovery. There is a very large blue cat.

Accessibility

Eureka Science + Discovery is based in the Seacombe ferry terminal in Wirral, and so you can catch a ferry across the Mersey to Liverpool and back. It’s a bit of a walk from the nearest Merseyrail station at Hamilton Square, but there are buses. There’s also a pay-and-display car park, although if you are driving and aren’t using Google Maps or the like, make sure you follow signs for the Seacombe ferry terminal. Although Eureka has been open a little while now, there aren’t any ‘brown signs’ yet for directions.

Being a brand new museum, accessibility is top-notch, with lifts and a changing places toilet. Extra support is also available for those with sensory issues.

Pre-booking of tickets is required, but then they’re valid as an annual pass. Whilst it’s not yet listed on the Max Card web site, if you have a Max Card, then one adult and one child get in absolutely free at present. Tesco Clubcard vouchers are also accepted but can’t be redeemed for an annual pass.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s Temperance Bar

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A photo of the outside of Mr Fitzpatrick's Temperance Bar in Rawtenstall, Lancashire

At one time in northern Britain, there were hundreds of ‘temperance bars’ – essentially pubs that didn’t serve alcohol. Nowadays, just one of the original temperance bars survives: Mr Fitzpatrick’s in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. We called in on the August Bank Holiday Monday, on our way to Gawthorpe Hall.

The Temperance Movement

The Temperance Movement came about during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th Century, as a way of steering workers away from the perils of drink. In England, the movement started in Preston in 1835 and spread across the newly-industrialised northern towns and cities. Followers of the temperance movement took a pledge to stay away from all alcohol, whether that be spirits, beer or cider. Therefore, temperance bars offered alcohol-free social spaces for the movement’s followers.

Temperance bars would offer a variety of flavoured non-alchohlic drinks, such as Sarsaparilla, Blood Tonic and Dandelion and Burdock. In our household, we’re heavy consumers of Vimto, and this fruity blend also came out of the Temperance Movement. Back in 2013, we went to an exhibition all about the Temperance movement at the People’s History Museum.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s

Nowadays, Mr Fitzpatrick’s is better known as a brand of cordials, which are on sale at many independent shops across the north of England and include the aforementioned flavours. They’ve hung on to this one remaining temperance bar, in the Lancashire town of Rawtenstall, where you can try their full range of cordials mixed with still or sparkling water. They also do milkshakes, and a decent food menu – we called in for lunch and our eight-year-old thought it was amazing. Upstairs, there’s a model railway suspended from the ceiling.

Whilst Mr Fitzpatrick’s is the last surviving of the original temperance bars, it’s an idea that seems to be coming back around. There’s a BBC piece about the ‘rise of the sober bar’ from 2019, and I’d argue that the various dessert bars that have popped up in majority Muslim areas in the UK are a response to the need for non-alcoholic social spaces. Many young Generation Z adults don’t drink, regardless of religious affiliation, and it’s nice to have bars that offer a wide range of interesting soft drinks. Even if you’re not teetotal, it’s a bit depressing when you’re not drinking and all there is on offer is cola or lemonade.

Accessibility

Being a very small and old building, accessibility isn’t great – the toilet is up a narrow, steep staircase although accessible facilities may be available at the nearby Rawtenstall Bus Station. Free parking for up to three hours is available nearby but you’ll need a Parking Disc (Sundays and Bank Holidays are free all day). Regular X43 Witch Way buses run towards Burnley and Manchester.

Rawtenstall is the northern terminus of the heritage East Lancashire Railway, which runs from Bury.

A visit to Gawthorpe Hall

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A photo of Gawthorpe Hall, a National Trust property in Padiham near Burnley in Lancashire.

Burnley is known for many things, including its football team, its history as a mill town, and the birthplace of Sir Ian McKellan. But it’s also home to Gawthorpe Hall, a stately home connected with the mill trade, which is now in the care of the National Trust. We went to visit it last week on the August Bank Holiday Monday.

Technically, Gawthorpe Hall is in the neighbouring town of Padiham, although the two pretty much flow into each other. There has been a building on the site since the 14th century, although much of the hall dates from the 16th century. It was then extensively rebuilt in the 19th century, and passed into National Trust ownership in 1970. Prior to the National Trust taking it on, it had been in the Shuttleworth (later Kay-Shuttleworth) family throughout its history. Over the years, the Shuttleworths hosted a number of famous historical guests at Gawthorpe, including Charlotte Brontë and King George VI.

Inside Gawthorpe Hall

Inside, there are three floors to explore. Downstairs there’s the dining room, with a balcony, and the drawing room which has some very detailed plasterwork on the ceiling. There’s also the usual shop in the entrance hall.

Upstairs is home to the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, run by an independent charity that was founded by Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, the last of the Kay-Shuttleworths to live at Gawthorpe. Rachel was a keen collector of textiles from around the world, and some samples from the collection are on display across the middle floor.

Up to the top floor, and there’s a family room, which is home to some toys for visitors to play with. There’s currently an exhibition about Gawthorpe Hall in the 1600s, including its links with the infamous Pendle Witch Trials. There’s also the Long Room, which spans the whole of one side of the house, and the Huntroyde Room; a bedroom with a four-poster bed.

The gardens and parkland

Outside, there are some formal gardens, although they’re not very extensive and situated around three sides of the hall. The grounds beyond are more extensive, although much of these were closed off due to damage from Storm Lilian. The gardens and grounds are normally open from 8am until 7pm at this time of year. There currently isn’t a café; I gather that there used to be one in one of the outbuildings but it looks like it’s been closed for some time.

Accessibility

The gardens and grounds should be accessible to all, and there are disabled toilets (but no Changing Places toilet). There are steps up to the hall, although once inside a wheelchair can access the ground floor, and an interactive computer workstation to view images of the upper floors. There is no lift.

The nearest railway station is Rose Grove, which is a 35 minute walk; Burnley Barracks and Burnley Manchester Road stations are a little further away. There are apparently frequent buses to the end of the drive from Burnley bus station, and then it’s around 10 minutes walk up the drive.

Although the National Trust own Gawthorpe Hall, it’s operated by Lancashire County Council and so it doesn’t take part in any free entry promotions. However, National Trust members do still get in for free, as do holders of a National Art Pass.

Heritage Open Days

Over the next couple of weeks, various historic places will be open for free for Heritage Open Days, and this includes Gawthorpe Hall on Saturday 14th September. Normally, entry is £7 each for adults (under-18s are free), so if you’re not a National Trust or National Art Pass member, this is an opportunity to explore the hall for free. However, maybe consider arriving by public transport; the car park on site is small, and we struggled to find a parking space when we visited.

A return trip to the National Coal Mining Museum

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A photo of Caphouse Colliery at the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

Last weekend, I took our eight-year-old to the National Coal Mining Museum for England. It was our second visit, the first being in 2017 which I wrote about at the time. Our eight-year-old was only one then, and so we couldn’t go down the old mineshaft, but this time we could.

This is now the third mine that we’ve been down in as many months; last month, we went to the one in Beamish, and in May we went to the one in the Black Country Living Museum. Caphouse Colliery, the mine at the National Coal Mining Museum, is different as it’s primarily a deep mine, and so the tour enters and exits using a lift in a 140 metre deep mine shaft. There is a drift entrance to the mine as well, but it’s mainly there for emergency evacuations now and isn’t part of the tour.

Mining ceased at Caphouse in the 1980s and it became a museum shortly after. So, whereas Beamish and the BCLM are set in the early twentieth century, here the mine tour covers the full history from the early 1800s right up to the more mechanised latter times. Though coal is no longer mined here, the mine is still regulated as an active coal mine and all battery powered devices have to be surrendered before the tour – hearing aids being the only exception. As such, I don’t have any photos from down the mine.

Back on the surface, we had a look at the indoor exhibitions, about miners’ lives and a special exhibition marking forty years since the Miners’ Strike. Around the colliery, you can see the old steam engine that powered the lift mechanism, and the Pithead Baths, where miners would start and end their shifts with a communal shower. There was also a cage with some canaries – the literal canaries in a coalmine.

We then caught the narrow gauge paddy train which takes you to the other end of the site, where there are new stables for horses and ponies. Ponies were still used down coal mines as recently as 1994, and so when the museum opened, it served as retirement stables. Whilst the ponies there now are rescues, none of them have worked down a mine.

As it was the summer holidays, there were some additional activities on for kids. A large sandpit was outside the Hope Pit to recreate a beach; when miners eventually became eligible for a week’s paid holiday, thousands would go to various UK seaside resorts like Blackpool, Skegness and Cleethorpes.

We had a good time; in retrospect, I’m surprised it’s taken us so long to go back, as it’s only just over half an hour’s drive away.

Accessibility

The underground mine tour is mostly accessible to wheelchair users, but the no batteries rule applies. Some of the buildings aren’t accessible due to their age. There are accessible toilets but the nearest Changing Places toilet is a ten minute drive away. More information is available on the web site.

Parking is available on site; it’s normally free, but there’s a £5 charge in summer (which in turn gives free use of the paddy train). There’s an hourly bus service between Wakefield and Huddersfield which calls at the museum.

What we didn’t do in Northumberland

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I managed to span the list of things we did whilst on holiday in Northumberland to eight blog posts, representing the seven days that we were on holiday. Because it was a short holiday, there were lots of places that we could have visited, but didn’t have the time. Here are some of them.

Alnwick Castle

Whilst we did visit The Alnwick Garden, which is adjacent and shares a car park, we didn’t go into the more famous castle next door. It dates from the 11th Century, following the Norman Conquest, although it was extensively re-modelled in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It’s often been used as a filming location, with the first series of Blackadder set there. More recently, it was used in last year’s Dungeons and Dragons film, and featured in the first two films about that wizard boy whose enemy cannot be named.

Howick Hall

Not far from Seahouses is Howick Hall, the ancestral home of the Earls Grey. The hall itself is open to visitors, as are its gardens and arboretum, and of course there’s a café where presumably there’s an expectation that you’ll drink Earl Grey Tea. Whilst the Earls Grey have owned the site since the 14th Century, the current house is less than 100 years old, having been substantially rebuilt following a fire.

Craster

Craster is another pretty fishing village like Seahouses. Whilst Seahouses claims to be where kippers where invented, Craster Kippers are more well-known. Craster is also known for its lobsters and crabs.

Dunstanburgh Castle

Had we visited Craster, we could have also called in at Dunstanburgh Castle. It’s a ruin – moreso than Warkworth Castle – and it’s just over a mile’s walk from Craster where the nearest car park is. We saw it from a distance as it’s on the coast, but the long walk from the car park and the fact that it’s a ruin put us off.

Beadnell

One of the main roads into Seahouses from the A1 passes the village of Beadnell, and so we drove past it multiple times without actually going into the village itself. It’s also a harbour, and looked quite pretty in some paintings that we saw.

Grace Darling Museum

Up the coast in the village of Bamburgh, and just a short walk from Bamburgh Castle, is the RNLI’s Grace Darling Museum. Grace Darling lived on the Farne Islands and was a daughter of one of the lighthouse keepers. She came to fame in 1838, when she was 22 years old, by risking her life to rescue the stranded survivors of a shipwreck – of the 62 people on board, all but three were rescued. Whilst she died a few years later aged 26, she managed to go down in history as a local heroine. The museum opened in 1938 to mark 100 years since her dramatic rescue.

Whilst the museum was very close to where we were staying, we’d pencilled it in for a day of bad weather. As it was, we were really lucky with the weather and so didn’t need an indoor backup plan.

Northumberland Zoo

Our summer holidays normally result in a zoo or aquarium visit, but we didn’t find the time this year. Had we stayed for longer, then we may have gone to Northumberland Zoo. It’s less than 10 years old, and tends to have smaller animals; the largest are medium-sized cats like servals, lynx and snow leopards.

Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum

Most people associate bagpipes with Scotland, but Northumberland has its own bagpipes, and there’s a museum about them in Morpeth. Indeed, it’s home to over 120 pipe instruments from around the world.

I’ve no doubt that we’ll have another holiday in Northumberland at some point in the future, and we may well visit some of these places that we didn’t manage to fit in.