Activity Quest: Days out and crafts for kids

Adam climbs a narrow spiral staircase, fifty-two steps of it, into the roof of an old church by London Bridge. Up there is the oldest surviving operating theatre in Europe...

It was built in 1822, in the attic where the hospital apothecaries had been drying their herbs, because the space sat right next to the women's ward and had a big skylight to operate under. It closed in 1862 when the hospital moved, was boarded up, and nobody set foot in it again until a researcher found it in 1956. Adam meets Dr Monica Walker for a look at how surgery worked before anaesthetic and before anyone knew about germs, which is not for the faint-hearted. Next door the Herb Garret is still full of the plants they used as medicine.

It is open Thursday to Sunday, 10.30am to 5pm, with last entry at 4.15pm. The spiral staircase is the usual way in, but there is an accessible entrance if you ring ahead.

Find out more by searching for the Old Operating Theatre Museum.

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Adam is in Bloomsbury this week, at the Grant Museum of Zoology. It is part of University College London, it is one room, and that room is packed floor to ceiling with skeletons, jars and glass cases...

It is one of the few university zoology museums left in the country, which means the collection was put together to teach with rather than to show off, and it still feels like that. There is a famous jar of moles, which is exactly what it sounds like. There is a free audio tour with ten stops if you want the stories behind the specimens, and a shop selling 3D-printed bones.

Best of all, it is free to get in. It is open Tuesday to Saturday, one o'clock until five, and it is a couple of minutes' walk from Euston Square.

Find out more by searching for the Grant Museum of Zoology.

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Bex heads to the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell, and then underneath it. Mail Rail is a tiny railway built to carry post across London, running in tunnels below the streets since the 1920s, and you get to ride through the original tunnels on a train that runs on the same track...

Up above, the museum tells the story of the post itself, and there is Sorted!, an indoor play space for children aged one to eight. A ticket covers the Mail Rail ride and a full year of entry to the museum. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, with the last ride down at 4pm.

PLUS: a trip to the Royal Observatory Greenwich to find out exactly what is going on during a partial solar eclipse.

Find out more by searching for the Postal Museum.

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Adam is in Notting Hill this week, at a museum made almost entirely of the things most people throw away. The Museum of Brands has kept the packaging: cereal boxes, sweet wrappers, toys, comics and adverts going back to the Victorians...

The heart of it is the Time Tunnel, a corridor that starts in the 1800s and walks you forward decade by decade, so you can watch the same products change shape as you go. Grown-ups tend to stop dead in front of whichever decade they grew up in, which is half the fun. There are family trails to pick up on the way round, a garden out the back and a cafe.

It is on Lancaster Road in Notting Hill, open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sundays from 11am.

Find out more by searching for the Museum of Brands.

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Adam visits Oxford Castle and Prison to step back in time and explore the city's past.

There has been something standing on this spot for a thousand years, and a costumed guide walks you through the lot, from Viking raids and the Norman conquest to the beginnings of education in Oxford and the city's long history of crime and punishment. The buildings were still a working prison until 1996, so the cells are the real thing rather than a reconstruction... There is a climb up St George's Tower for a view out across the rooftops, and the castle mound next door is free to walk up whenever you like.

It is open every day from 10am to 5pm, with tours setting off every fifteen to thirty minutes. Under fives go free, although they are not allowed up the tower.

Find out more by searching for Oxford Castle and Prison.

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Adam is off to Forest Hill in south London for the Horniman Museum and Gardens, and the curious tale of a very overstuffed walrus...

The walrus arrived in London in Victorian times, and the story goes that the taxidermist who prepared it had never seen a live one, so he filled out every last wrinkle until it ended up smooth, round and enormous. It has been a south London favourite ever since. There is far more to the Horniman than the walrus though. The World Gallery is packed with objects from across the globe, there is a famous collection of musical instruments, an aquarium and a butterfly house, an Animal Walk that opens in the afternoons, and sixteen acres of gardens with a view right across London.

One thing to know before you go: the Natural History Gallery is closed while it is redeveloped, and the walrus is off display until it reopens, currently expected in early 2027. The museum and gardens are free to visit, and the aquarium and butterfly house are ticketed.

Find out more by searching for the Horniman Museum and Gardens.

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This week Adam is wandering around the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, finding out what is on offer for visitors of every age.

The Ashmolean opened its doors in 1683, which makes it the first public museum in Britain, and what is inside now covers half a million years of art and archaeology. Egyptian mummies, Greek and Roman sculpture, treasures from Asia and paintings from the last hundred years all sit under one roof, arranged so you can wander from the ancient world right up to the present day...

Entry is free and it is open every day from 10am, with last entry at 4.45pm. Families can pick up a trail or an explorer pack from the Welcome Desk on the way in, there is a Gallery Adventure to follow around the galleries, and on Saturdays volunteers in the Money Gallery bring out coins from all over the world for visitors to handle.

Find out more by searching for the Ashmolean Museum.

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Adam heads into the City of London and then goes down, well below the modern pavements, to investigate the capital's Roman past at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE.

Underneath the building is the temple of Mithras, put up by Roman Londoners around 1,800 years ago and dug up again in the 1950s. It has been rebuilt on the spot where it was found, and it is brought to life with light, haze and sound so you get a sense of what it might have felt like to step inside all those centuries ago... Upstairs there is a wall of objects pulled out of the ground when the site was excavated, and a changing contemporary art commission that responds to the history underneath.

Best of all, it is completely free to visit, although it is worth booking a slot before you go. It is open Tuesday to Saturday and on Sunday afternoons, and closed on Mondays.

Find out more by searching for London Mithraeum.

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Adam is off to Bedfordshire for a day at Woburn Safari Park, and he has landed one of the park's very special VIP experiences. That means getting far closer to the animals than most visitors ever manage, including the moment he gets to feed the giraffes...

Woburn comes in two halves. On the Road Safari you stay in the car and drive slowly through the reserves, with rhino, bears, tigers, lions, zebra, monkeys and elephants on the other side of the window, and you can go round as many times as you like. Then you park up for the Foot Safari, where there are walk-through enclosures, keeper talks and feeding demonstrations through the day, and animals including lemurs, meerkats, sea lions and penguins. There is plenty besides the animals too, from the Great Woburn Railway to the Mammoth Play Ark indoor play area and the Go Ape treetop course.

The park is open every day, with last entry at 5pm and the gates closing at 6pm.

Find out more by searching for Woburn Safari Park.

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Adam heads to Filton on the northern edge of Bristol, where a First World War airfield has become Aerospace Bristol, a museum telling the story of more than a hundred years of flying. This is a place where aeroplanes were designed and built for a century, and the galleries take you from the flimsy wood and canvas machines of the early 1900s right through to helicopters, rockets and missiles.

The star of the show sits in a hangar all of her own: Concorde Alpha Foxtrot, the very last Concorde ever built and the very last one to fly. Adam gets up close to the fastest passenger plane there has ever been and finds out why she flew home to Filton in 2003 and never took off again.

He also visits the conservation workshop, a Grade II listed hangar put up around 1915, where volunteers are slowly bringing a Second World War Bristol bomber back to life, piece by piece, in front of visitors. There are hands-on exhibits, trails for younger explorers and an outdoor play area too, so it is an easy few hours out whatever the weather is doing.

Aerospace Bristol is open seven days a week. Find out more by searching for Aerospace Bristol.

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