Autumn Walks around Bury St Edmunds - Nowton Park

It has been great walking weather recently and we've been revisiting some favourite places. Nowton Park is one. The trees look fantastic in the sunshine.

But we were here not jut to walk, but to do the Autumn Trail...

Little W did the simple 5 question one, while the girls did the full 20 questions. You have to find the clues around the park. Here's one...

We've done them before, but have not tired of them yet, even though we now know where to look for the clues. The trail is open until Sunday 2nd November.

Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary

The real reason why I suggested Sunny Hunny for our day trip was that Little Miss had been asking for ages to go to an aquarium. She loves fish almost as much as she loves horses (and unicorns, but I've not managed to find any to take her to see yet). We were there to visit the Sea Life Sanctuary.

Be sure to check out special offers and discount vouchers online before you go. The sea-life displays are excellent. This was my favourite...

But they've also got some open top displays one with rays and another with starfish and urchins that you can touch.

Outside they have penguins, otters and seals, all of which you can watch being fed at different times. Here are the otters watching out for their food...

The seals are pretty friendly...

And then there's the Shark Tunnel...

where you can see them swimming over your head. The kids thought it was fantastic, but by now they were hungry.

It was before Little W was born that we were last in Hunstanton, but Cassie's family restaurant...

...is still there and we ate there again, served by he same waitress! Excellent food too.

Then it was off to stock up on rock and have an ice-cream before heading off to Sandringham for an afternoon walk. Yes that was a good day out and we all slept well that night!

Sunny Hunny Hunstanton

For a half-term treat the Missus thought we should take a day-trip to the coast. She wanted to go to one of the usual spots like Dunwich Heath or Southwold but I suggested the North West Norfolk coast instead, for reasons to be revealed in the next post...

Hunstanton, also known as "Sunny Hunny" is about 12 miles north of Kings Lynn. The old village at the top of the cliffs was extended to become a seaside resort with a new green to the south of sloping down to the sea.

It's about 60 miles from Bury St Edmunds, but the roads can be slow - it took us about 1 hr 20 minutes to get there, setting off from home before 9 o'clock to make a day of it. Popular since about the 1860's, it's still a busy family resort in the summer, but wasn't too busy when we got there, as you can see.

The water is shallow and the tide goes out a long way into The Wash.

We had a lovely long walk along the beach and under the amazing two-tone cliffs...

... an excellent site for discovering fossils, but watch out for the crumbling cliffs! Little W and I found a couple of fossilised shells while the girls searched the rock pools.

But that wasn't the main reason why we had come to Sunny Hunny...

Cambridge Ideas Festival - #5 The Big Draw - Drama in the Antarctic

Our final stop of the day was at the Scott Polar Research Institute to take part in the 'Big Draw' event there. Here are the girls adding their bits to the 'Freezing Frieze'...

Little W wouldn't leave his picture behind, though as he wanted to do more work on it...

While I viewed the fascinating photography and Nimrod exhibitions, they all went on to make some snowflakes...

...to be hung from the suspended sled...

By now we had had a full day so we headed back to the Newmarket Road Park&Ride. What a good day out! The Festival is on until next Sunday. We may go back.

Cambridge Festival of Ideas - #4 Drumming Workshop

Leaving the girls to make their nano-models, Little W and I sneaked off across the courtyard to the Centre of Latin American Studies to find the Drumming Workshop. There were loads of big drums to try out...

Here is Little W beside our tutor who got us making different sounds and got us to drum together.

Fantastic. My favourite activity of the day. But we couldn't stay too long - Little W's hands go sore from beating the drums so hard!

Cambridge Festival of Ideas - #3 Nanoworld

After lunch it was back to the Pitt Building for the Chinese Paper Cutting... except that was really busy adn there was a big queue so we went to Nanoworld instead - an Art workshop exploring the tiny. There were lots of pictures to give inspiration and a huge supply of different colours of plasticene. Her is Little W making his virus...

...and here is one of Little Miss' attempts...

As for Big Miss, well she made some DNA...

Good work. So I ended up going home with a bagful of viruses. Nice!

Cambridge Festival of Ideas - #2 Seismographics

Next stop was the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences for the 'Seismographics' event. And of course we had a good look arond the museum here too.

First activity we tried was the pendulm drawing. In case you didn't know, this is how seismographs work. The helpers simlated an earthquake by wobbling the paper underneath the pendulum. I loved the construction - a rubber glove filled with sand as the weight with pens attached to a finger. Here's Little Miss having a go.


Then we attended the Science Show presented by Joel Gill, which explained all about earthquakes, with fun demos. Here are Little W and Little Miss helping out with the demonstration of S-waves and P-waves...

...and here is Big Miss helpng out by jumping up and down to create the seismic activity displayed on the trace.

After the talk we tried out out some of the demos. The Missus enjoyed herself too!



In fact we had to drage her away to visit the '18th Century Play Room' before it finished at 1pm.

Cambridge Festival of Ideas - #1 'Discover Fenland'

Yesterday we had a brilliant day out at the Cambridge Ideas Festival - new this year, and we will definitely back next year. It's running from 22nd October to 2nd November, but yesterday was the day of peak activity.

We started at the Museum of Zoology which had a 'Discover Fenland' Day. Apart from the 'Fens through a Lens' exhibition of photos there was also information about the Great Fen Project and some hands on activities. But the museum itself is fascinating. Here's Little W looking for dinosaur bones.

He and his sister both made badges...

... and then some dragonflies...

...while Big Miss did the quiz.

Well that was fun. Where shall we go next?