Walk Down Memory Lane (Beamish North of England Open Air Museum)

Member Name: shewhoguards

Product:	Beamish North of England Open Air Museum
Date:	29/05/08 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great educational and fun visit

Disadvantages: Expensive, poor disabled access

It was a beautiful Bank Holiday Sunday and I had a friend staying with me. Being that we both enjoy a bit of history now and then we decided to take a drive down to Beamish.

Beamish is a very large North Eastern open air museum. The entire thing is based in 1913 and you can ride on real old trams and buses between places such as a town centre and mining village. I advise using this as it's a good 20 minute walk between locations - pretty and good exercise, but tiring.

There are period actors everywhere to explain things - a dentist in the dentist's surgery, a lady in the grocer's shop, a housewife in the miner's village. These folk are friendly and really know their stuff, able to answer most questions on the spot. There's also a schoolroom complete with playground which seems to be the cue for every adult visiting to run to play with stick-and-hoops and hopscotch (I won!).

Highlight of the visit for us was a visit down an old coal mine. Beware, some people might feel claustrophobic here - we had to stoop, and neither of us stands much above 5 foot tall. The six footers in the group going down looked as though they were quite uncomfortable.

It's worth checking the website before you go, as they quite often have special events on. We got to see a brass band, but had we been able to go Saturday rather than Sunday we would have got to see all the Empire Day celebrations.

Food can be expensive and the queues were too big for us to even try to get any. However, we'd thought ahead and brought a picnic, and I would advise anyone else visiting to do the same. There's a lovely large village green to eat it on - perfect picnic ground with a surprisingly small amount of litter.

While I loved this, I'm not sure how good the access would be for the disabled. Because it's built very very accurately... well, they just weren't thinking about the disabled in 1913. I would suggest calling before you visit to see what arrangements can be made because there's no way a wheelchair could fit on the trams or bus.

Finally we come to the price. It's not cheap I'm afraid. I paid £13 for my student pass, and it's £16 for adults and £10 for kids. There is a family pass for £32 with one adult or £46 with two adults and the prices drops to £6 each in winter as some parts of Beamish close then. An annual pass however is only £21 for adults, £13 for kids, and £17 for students and this may well be worth considering as after spending an entire day there we felt as thought we had barely seen half of it. There's an entire fairground I still want to go back to see!

Summary: Worth the cost but try an annual pass