Jodrell Bank and a dog...

[1st]

We decided to visit Jodrell Bank which is a huge telescope in Cheshire. I haven't been for years, I remember going on a school trip, back then it was the biggest telescope of its kind in the world, now it is number #3!

The weather was so annoying, one-minute blue skies and fluffy white clouds then next black skies and heavy rain!

Over the summer they have a lot of talks and activities on so we started with a laser experiment whilst we waited for the talk to start. You had to use the various lens to get the lasers to hit different points on the page, it was a great hands on activity and got the old brain cells working.

Then we watched the talk/demo. It was the history of Jodrell Bank and all the important discoveries and events that it has been involved in over the years. The woman who did the talk was great, funny and made it interesting with demos - like blowing up a balloon full of rocket fuel!

I learned quite a lot - I'm sure much of it would have been covered in my school visit but that was many years ago!

As you can see, it is quite a big thing! You can actually see it on the Cheshire plains from the village I grew up in but don't realize the size until you are up close! Note the blue skies...

We had lunch in the cafe there, lovely homemade type of food, big fat chunky chips, and everything served on tin plates. Bit different but the food was great. My mom doesn't eat much so she ordered a kids portion of Cottage pie and it was a whole dish full, I dread to think what the adult's version would be like!

They also have another building with hands on experiments and things to do which were fun. It's not huge so I doubt you'd spend all day there unless the weather was good and you took a picnic. There are 35 acres of garden to explore too but due to the rain, we gave that a miss.

After that we went over to the park for a quick play and then dropped round to see moms friend who was in this time!

She has the most adorable dog, Delta who Ebi-kun fell in love with. So of course now he wants a dog! I would love another border collie but not where we live, they need space to run around and we just have that.

So it was a fun filled day and we felt that we had actually managed to 'do' something. We got back in time for me to pack all the backs for the next part of our adventure... Brighton!