A weekend in Northumberland - Part 2

On Sunday we decided to head into Newcastle and do some city stuff.

First of all we headed for the brilliant Life Centre. I have to say this is one of the best visitor centres I have ever been to. The layout is fantastic - they don't force you through on a trail. You are not crammed into small spaces. It is spacious with a huge amount of hands on stuff aimed at kids of all ages. I had trouble keeping up with Ruaridh as he wanted to do everything and *loved* that there were steps everywhere so things that were too high for him he could drag a step up to and get on with it without having to be lifted up to see things like in so many other places. There were things to climb into, hide in, dig, hang from, poke and explore. Absolutely fantastic. So many highlights and I am sure I will miss some out.

The first area we explored was looking at survival and had a lot about life in deserts and in the Arctic. You could dress up as an Inuit:


Build an igloo (or hide in one) - although this one was built by someone else and Ruaridh and Orla had great fun knocking it down:


Orla had a go at driving a rickshaw - and Ruaridh insisted I put on my (imaginary) seatbelt before we could set off:


We did a bit of digging in the gravel looking for bones:



After lunch we returned to this area to go to one of the talks on survival in the Arctic. It was a fantastic presentation by a guy who really pitched the talk to children making it interactive. Morgan's hand was constantly up in the air answering questions. At one point we were asked how to walk on deep snow. "With tennis rackets" Morgan answered. So - he was called up to the front and cut-off tennis rackets tied to his shoes and he walked across a ball pool (to represent deep snow). A proud Mummy moment!


Morgan and I (and later on Martin and Morgan) went on The Crazy Motion Ride. Basically you watched the screen and sat in a motion-seat while you went through a mine on a runaway car - really, really good fun.

The other show we all went to was in The Dome - where big comfortable seats gave us a great view of the sky above us looking at the winter sky. Again they had got the pitch spot on. Even Orla managed to sit through this and was fascinated by the animation above us. We learned about stars and the constellation of Orion - which we all spotted on the way back to the Hostel that night. It was really, really good.

Finally we finished off our visit to Life with a spot of ice-skating. Hmmm - it's been a while and I did not like wearing the heavy boots. I'm sure ice skates didn't have heels when I was a child. They were not at all comfortable!! And I was terrible!! Orla had some cute ice skates that fitted over her boots but she agreed that she wasn't very good either. In fact out of all of us who went on (Martin stayed at the side taking pictures) Ruaridh was the best at it and had fun too!



Following on from that we headed to the Metro Centre where we had a few things we needed to buy like a new battery for the camera. Then we went for a meal at Nando's which was great and the kids behaved beautifully. We finished off with a trip to the cinema at the Metro Centre to see Bolt. It was Orla's first trip to the cinema and she had a great time. In her own seat for most of it and then on Martin's lap, my lap and finally on Morgan's lap!!! We went back to the Hostel happy and exhausted.

All in all a fantastic (and expensive) weekend away.