Legoland - Denmark with John & Åse

  Legoland - Denmark  

Legoland, oh what a fantastic place! Everywhere we looked; houses, people, animals, everything you could imagine made from those unique plastic bricks. A tour of the miniature village allowed us to see harbours, trains, factories, airports and road networks all made from Lego. The detail that goes into these scenes were just incredible. 

After many rides, the most exciting one was the Eagle roller coaster. One for the thrill seekers amongst us!  

Back at the holiday village we found a huge mix between a bouncy castle and trampoline, where we all jumped, bounced, laughed and we are sure you could have heard our whooping and laughing for miles around.

We went to the Zoo and what a Zoo to marvel at! A combination of Wild life park,  Safari park and Zoo all mixed together to create a special place where we could drive past lions, elephants and we could park up and observe the vast array of animals from around the world up close. We fed camels and listened to interesting facts about gorillas and otters.

The Zoo also had a dinosaur park with life size models that we found fascinating to walk round. 

As the weather was so amazing we decided to have an afternoon of  playing some fun games of mini golf!

Our second full day at the incredible Legoland where we got to go on the rest of the rides that we hadn’t had time to do on our first visit. We definitely managed to go on most of the rides! We did a bit of shopping at the Legoland gift shop and we all treated ourselves to a little something.

Yorkshire Dales, TV Soap Country with Candy & Lorraine

  Yorkshire Dales, TV Soap Country   

At the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes we had the opportunity to taste many different cheeses and see the cheese making process. References were made to Wallace and Grommit and we had great fun having our photos taken with the characters. 

We went to the Woolpack Inn for Sunday lunch, with Yorkshire puddings all round! The Woolpack is the pub featured in the popular TV soap Emmerdale. Everyone had a chance to pull a pint behind the bar and we all thought we would make great bar staff!

Our first stop was The Carding Shed at Jackson Bridge. Here we saw a collection of car related memorabilia before stopping in the café for tea and coffee which was served in vintage cups and we tried their homemade cakes. The waitresses were fabulous in their 50's dresses. 

A short drive and we were amongst the film locations for The Last of the Summer Wine. We visited a museum which is in Nora Batty's Cottage with lots of memorabilia. We had our lunch in Sid's with cardboard cut outs of Nora with her broom! 

We also took a tour in a vintage bus around the area, with great commentary from the driver.

In Pickering we caught the train to Goathland. After a journey through some stunning countryside we stopped at another old station which was used as Hogsmeade Station in the first Harry Potter film. Goathland is known as Aidensfield in the TV series Heartbeat. We had a cream tea in the café where the police car from the series is parked.

In York we caught the open-top bus and had a tour of the city which took us into the suburbs as well as pointing out all the places of interest inside the city. We learnt that in York, streets are called gates. Gates are called bars and bars are called pubs! All very confusing! We saw the fantastic York Minster and walked through the tiny street.

The Wonders of the Isle of Wight with Darren & Marguerite

  The Wonders of the Isle of Wight  

Our evenings was spent enjoying music and dancing from comedy show, bands and tribute singer. We also participated in some line dancing. Great nights was enjoyed by all.

At the bowling alley we took part in a friendly competition; boys vs girls. After a very close game with some great scores, the boys were victorious!

We spent an afternoon on the steam railway at Ryde; one of Britain’s heritage railways and a registered educational charity. We sat in restored Victorian and Edwardian carriages where we were able to take in the views of the islands unspoilt countryside. Everyone really enjoyed this trip which was rounded off by visiting the railway museum.

We went to the famous Needles landmark at Alum bay. This is a point of natural outstanding beauty overlooking the 3 stacks of chalk in a row that rise about 30m out of the sea off the western side of the Isle of Wight.

We were lucky to enjoy demonstrations of glass blowing, sweet making and we got to try filling ornaments with colourful sands. We watched it being sealed to keep as a souvenir.