Days out diary - child friendly and family activities

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The Real Brum

In July I visited the Cotswold Motoring Museum and Toy Collection at Bourton-on-the-Water. I wrote a blog entry:

Last weekend I had another opportunity to visit the museum and this time had some children with me. This included my daughter (who just slept through the whole visit), but also 3 boys, ages 2; 4 and 6. Whilst the previous review was based on my impression of what children would think of the museum, this one has some first hand experience.

Fortunately on this occassion Brum was back in the main part of the museum and was very popular with the children. I assume that it was just a one-off that he was missing on our previous visit.

Much of the museum is as I described before and, as I expected, the fact that most of the exhibits were hands-off exhibits was a little frustrating for the children. The boys had to be told a number of times that they were not allowed to touch. There was a quiz to work through when you went around the museum, but after the first few questions we gave up as it was hard to enjoy the museum whilst trying to follow the quiz, especially as we had a queue forming behind us. Questions on the exhibits would probably have been better.

The childrens trailer did surprise me a little as it was quite popular with the children. It's still not a real solution as it is outside and therefore not very good in bad weather, but there is a little more behind the surface. The youngest boy just wanted to play with the model cars that had been left out, but the older two created a brass rubbing, and matched the vehicles with the labels. There was a sign that the extension currently being built will include more childrens activities, so that's worth looking forward to (I think it will be open next year).

The children liked the toy section, in that they were delighted in spotting as many brums as they could find, but the only think they were allowed to touch was the ride-on brum.

There was a bit more for the children to do than I originally thought

and they did enjoy the visit, but I was still left with the impression that more was needed to make this a fun museum. There is certainly a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing how it improves in the future.