Lego!

We left the south coast this morning after waving my nephews off at school and headed northwards again, stopping in Manchester after a good few hours on the road.

The Legoland Discovery centre in Manchester is in no way comparable to the 'resort' at Windsor, for a start it is all indoors and on one level and can be walked around in about 10 minutes if you didn't have a lego loving child with you. There are only three rides in the place, so it is not so much a theme park as a large softplay/activity centre based all around Lego. And there is the thing, if you have someone with you who is a big lego fan, then it will be huge hit straight away. Piles and piles of lego pieces everywhere you look, northern England constructed in lego, a 4D cinema showing films made out of lego, a lego racers build centre with test ramps and timer chips, a classroom teaching you how to make all sorts of models and lots of lego structures all around the hall.

It's overpriced, perhaps even more so than Windsor, but I discovered that if you go after 4 (it is open till 7) and you have booked online, you get half price tickets with an extra 20% off. Given we were unlikely to reach Manchester until after 3 anyway, I booked the evening slot tickets via my lovely husband's phone while stopped at a service station on the M40. At that rate it was the perfect holiday treat in an otherwise long journey northwards.

My two loved every minute of the three hours we spent there, the older one spent ages building cars and trucks to race down the ramps while the younger one ran riot around the fire academy soft play area. We all got soaked by the hosepipe while watching the adventures of Clutch Powers. The best bit however (according to the boys), was the introductory chat that Professor Brick-a-Brack gave them in the lego factory where they got to 'make' their own lego piece to take home.