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Showing posts with label free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free. Show all posts

Monday, May 23, 2016

Crabbing in Appledore

Living in Nottingham means we are very rarely able to visit the coast, it's at least a two hour drive in every direction. So when we are at the coast, we like to make the most of our time there, our recent adventure in Devon took us to the beautiful village of Appledore where we did some crabbing.

This isn't an expensive activity and gave us about three hours of fun for less than a tenner. We ate lunch of fish and chips shared between us, sat on the harbour walls waiting for a crab to bite. It was the perfect way to get outside and all enjoy an activity which connected us back with nature.

If you have never been to Appledore, then I can highly recommend this wonderful little town, with it's beautiful harbour front, cafes and antique shops and plenty of small alleyways leading to wonderful little houses and seaside craft shops it is well worth a trip.




For the crabbing itself, all you need is a line, a bucket and some bait, all in this cost us about £4 for the bucket and line and we had some bacon from breakfast, so we bought that along.

You pop the bacon in a little bag on the end of the line and then cast out into the sea, it took a while for us to catch our first crab but we did and named him Bob. Shortly after we caught two more and then whilst the boys were off getting chips my daughter and I caught another one.

It was an absolutely wonderful experience to show the children how things work, that this is how food is caught and the patience needed for something like this. We did put them back, I for one don't eat fish and these tiny little crabs needed to go back home.



With so many wonderful days out on our trip, it is hard to choose just one but this was a free activity that meant we got to spend time together without interruptions.

Monday, January 6, 2014

A Visit to the Natural History Museum

New Year was rather soggy, not really caring about staying up till midnight we used this as an excuse to get an early(ish) night and head to Natural History Museum in London on New Years Day.

There was no traffic on the way down so it didn't take very long, we parked up at Westfield in Shepheards Bush and our adventure started their.

My husband is always in London where as I have only been a few times and the children never, so the tube was a big adventure and one the kids loved.

The museum itself can get very busy but it wasn't at that time on New Years day so we didn't have to queue and got straight in. After dropping the coats off in the cloak room we got down to some exploring.



Oooh whats this? Honestly I can't remember.


Seeing how different size stones fall faster in water and looking at the different rock.


If you watched Alive with David Attenborough on New Years Day you will no doubt recognise this beauty, the lovely Dippy the Diplodocus.


The ceiling is unbelievably beautiful and awe inspiring, in fact there wasn't one bit of the building that wasn't amazing


We had gone specifically for the dinosaurs for my son, shame then that he was petrified of the anamatronic dinosaurs on top of a display cabinet and didn't then want to see the main event a giant T-Rex, but we still had a good time spotting the different dinos. It is amazing how many we now know, I guess that is what 4 years of reading dinosaur books does.



The shadow's were as impressive as the skeleton.




Possibly my favourite animal out of them all was this pink fairy armadillo! So cute!


Last year my son did the lifecycle of a caterpillar and butterfly so this was a great display to see, although this area wasn't for the faint hearted with spiders and scorpions!


Crabs! What do they all have in common?


Even the newer additions to the building look good, I loved this passageway, it was a bit of a rabbit warren and I had no idea where we were most of the time.


Looking back at the pictures I couldn't believe how life like this was.


I love the Dodo, it is sad they are extinct and it was us humans that did it!


The building really is a beautiful object itself and I just couldn't stop myself looking at the walls and friezes.



Best of all the Natural History Museum is free, and we were there all day. The queue on leaving was huge even with only an hour and a half left. With lots of food on offer in the cafe's and restaurant you don't really need to leave though so can stay the whole day. Lots of exploring and nature to look at all indoors, which when on a typical British bank holiday was great.

Linking up to County Kids over on the Coombe Mill blog.


Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall