Place Name:
Pencil Museum
Location: Keswick,
England, CA12 5NG
Cost: Adults
£4.50, Kids £3.50
Parking: Pay and
display carpark to rear of building; £4 for all day
Time needed: hour
to hour and a half
Restrictions: Must
be on lead. If there is a demonstration on, dogs are not permitted in the cafe
area but there is spaces to eat outside.
Refreshments:
Cafe inside the gift shop area
Website:
http://www.pencilmuseum.co.uk/
The Pencil
Museum was originally on the to-do list as a bit of a joke. One of the first
places we found that allowed dogs inside, we simply had to take Missy and find
out just how ridiculously twee the place would be...
The Pencil
museum is well sign posted and easy to find. The car park gives you all day
parking for £4, and that comes with a £1.50 off entry voucher, so we didn't
begrudge that, especially as we'd already made plans to be spending the day in
Keswick so the parking suited. We had
decided that we were going to stop for lunch first, so were a little caught out
that due to the demonstration, Missy wasn't allowed into the cafe area (there's
a small additional room that they are normally allowed in). There was plenty of
outside sitting, so we braved the chill and ate out, though in hindsight there
was a million dog friendly cafes and pubs barely five minutes away, so we
should have just looked elsewhere.
We were
pleasantly surprised within the museum - if anything, if wasn't big enough!
There was a history on pencils and graphite in general, a section about the spy
pencils from WW2, machinery and videos explaining how pencils are made and even
tiny pencil lead sculptures! The floors were all carpeted so Missy was quite
happy to lie down whilst we watched the videos.
The strangest
thing for us was that no one batted an eyelid with having Missy in with us! She
had a tremendous fuss made over her by the staff in the gift shop, bu other
than that we were left to our own devices.
Overall rating :
5/5 - Surprisingly interesting and informative, staff were absolutely brilliant
and really pleased to see us.
I now have a sausage dog! |
Puzzling Place
Place Name: Puzzling
Place
Location: Keswick,
England, CA12 5DZ
Cost: Adults £3.75,
Kids £2.90
Parking: A short
walk from the Pencil Museum car park (£4 all day pay and display)
Time Required: 1
hour
Restrictions: None.
Refreshments: None.
Website: http://www.puzzlingplace.co.uk/
This was a quick
stop for after the Pencil Museum and the hubby particularly likes his puzzles
and optical illusions. It was a short walk from where we'd parked which was
ideal for us and was relatively well sign posted.
Up a flight of
stairs and we entered a small shop before paying to go into the main attraction.
For less than £4 it had a good mix of optical illusion posters, holograms and
some very clever camera mounted sets that made it look like you were walking on
the wall and things. Some of the holograms were a little worse for wear, but
other than that it was well laid out, clean and very enjoyable.
Getting Missy to
pose with the illusions was a little tricky, but other than that, we all had a
good time!
Overall rating :
3/5 - A nice cheap way to kill an hour, but the low price does reflect on the
exhibits.
There's a pencil museum? I have to ask, did you get one from the gift shop?
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good day though worth checking to see about demonstrations before hand.
Yes, pencils were bought!
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