We’ve missed out on or delayed a number of trips and holidays over the last year and a half for, you know, pandemic-related reasons. So this summer, in addition to our trip to Lichfield, we arranged a series of back-to-back expeditions.
1. Alton Towers
The first leg of our holiday saw us spend a long weekend at Alton Towers, staying over at one of their themed hotels in between days at the water park and theme park:
The CBeebies Land hotel is… whimsical.
Yes, there’s a puppeteer (somewhere) in that cabinet processing checkins.
Even the elevators play tunes and put on a light show with every journey.
It took me a while to see this rabbit as playing music, rather than, y’know… vomiting.
The whimsy continues in the theming of the restaurant. Yes, that windmill turns.
Technically, this is part of one of the other (similarly whimsical) hotels on the site, but nobody seemed to mind our exploring.
On at least one occasion we ate dinner in “The Library”, which turns out (disappointingly) not to be a library but a room with pictures of books on the wall.
The hotel puts on a series of show somewhat reminiscent of an “upscale” Pontins.
Bing the rabbit made me glad that the other end of this hotel room had a bar.
The (Octonauts) theming of our hotel room even extended as far as the phone, TVs, and that notice they put up about towel washing. Neat.
Hole in… seven?
For obvious reasons, we don’t have photos inside the water park. Ignore the sign, we asked permission before taking this one!
Befriending wildfowl is what people with kids come to theme parks for, right?
Yay! Frog fountains!
The In The Night Garden Boat Ride was a particular favourite.
Social distancing was imposed reasonably wall, all things considered, although (as you’d expect) many fairgoers were less-disciplined than we’d have liked.
We spent a lot of our first day in the theme park in CBeebies Land, but we only had the patience to queue for the Octonauts rollercoaster the once.
CBeebies Land itself had a variety of shows with different characters.
Makaton for “friend” is just cute. Thanks, Mr. Tumble.
On these, among the hottest days of the year, we got quite sweaty inside our masks.
I’m not sure we optimised this photo opportunity for height.
An unrepentant nose-picker gets jail time in Mutinty Bay.
The Postman Pat ride designer had the foresight to provide two steering wheels in case the participants weren’t good at sharing… but still provided an odd number of buttons to use to “deliver parcels” at key points during the ride.
Later in the first day and into the second day we stepped up to more-exciting family rides, like the Congo River Rapids, and even a few thrill rides that interested only a subset of our party.
The Congo River Rapids had a tediously long queue (not least because no groups, however small, were allowed to share a boat), but at least we all got to take part together as a family.
The kids had to make a solemn promise to stop their bickering before they were allowed to sit together for this ride.
Not everybody was equally-enthusiastic about haunted house shoot-’em-up ride Duel.
2. Darwin Forest
The second leg of our holiday took us to a log cabin in the Darwin Forest Country Park for a week:
We punctuated our journey from Alton Towers with a trip to Chatsworth House to feed some livestock.
Chatsworth House also has a spectacular adventure playground.
“I found a stick!” “That’s… half a tree!”
Eventually we reached our cabin, unpacked… and jumped into the hot tub!
For the duration of the week we instituted “holiday mornings”, permitting the children to get up by themselves, assemble their own breakfast, and watch broadcast TV… so long as they did so without disturbing the adults. It worked pretty well.
The forest trails are full of obstacles fun for children… and adults.
This way up.
No, THIS way up!
Further along the trail, there’s a traverse wall.
Off the trails, all kinds of curious sculptures – like these fairy houses – can be found.
We forgot to bring a football, but we played lots of imaginary sports.
The on-site soft play centre operated at minimal capacity, which felt about right.
A soft play centre with a low population means you’re often alone on the racing slides…
…that is, unless you bring your own racers to compete with!
The second mini-golf course of our holiday was deceptively harder than the first thanks to awkwardly-shaped obstacles that reflected the ball out at terrible angles.
Ruth’s old secondary school is now an old folks home and an attached fancy tea room, so – as we were in the vicinity – we had to go visit!
Remarkably, the kids (for once) showed impeccable table manners.
I’m almost embarrassed to say that this, one of the best photos I’ve ever taken, was snapped accidentally when a 4-year-old reached over and touched my camera.
What else does one do in the Derbyshire Dales? That’s right: go down caves!
Staff at the Devil’s Arse were amazing and even took the kids on their own personal tour of a ropemaker’s hut (not part of the routine tour).
We also got to bring home a length of rope that the kids helped make.
It turns out to be hard to take a good photo down a cave. Can’t think why.
Our second spelunking expedition took us into Speedwell Cavern by boat.
The bottomless pit, behind us, turns out to be less-bottomless than advertised.
When it wasn’t raining, it was hot. Either way, we were on holiday, so ice cream was in order.
The kids shared a bedroom for pretty-much the first time since we moved house last year, and routinely sat up late reading stories to one another until they zonked out mid-book.
Naturally, I took one of our “chill out and rest” days as an excuse for a nice long hike and a geocaching expedition to the Sydnope Valley.
We also tried an local escape room and it was spectacularly well-designed (and amazingly family-friendly).
