Activity Quest: Days out and crafts for kids

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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Adam heads to Topgolf, a driving range with a twist, where golf gets mixed up with a bit of darts and a bit of bowling. You don’t need to have played before and you don’t need your own clubs, because everyone gets a bay, a set of clubs to borrow and a screen keeping score.

The clever bit is the golf balls. Every single one has a tiny microchip inside it, so when you whack it out into the outfield the giant targets know exactly which ball was yours and where it landed. Your points pop up on the screen a second later, and the further away the target and the closer to the middle you land, the more you score.

Adam takes on the targets to find out whether he’s any good, and it turns out this is a game where you can be pretty terrible at golf and still have a brilliant time. It’s a good one for the summer holidays too, because the bays are covered, so a bit of rain doesn’t stop play. Topgolf has venues around the UK, and you can find your nearest one by searching for Topgolf.

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Bex sends Dan to Greenwich for a face your fears challenge, and he turns up on the riverside with no idea what is coming. Inside his envelope is the mission: climb to the top of the Cutty Sark, the famous tea clipper that once raced tea leaves from Asia to Europe and now sits in dry dock in south London. The problem is that Dan is terrified of heights, and so is producer Paul!

Strapped into harnesses, safety lines and heart rate monitors, they head up the ratlines, the rope ladders that sailors once climbed with nothing attached to them at all. The Cutty Sark Rig Climb Experience takes you to the tops platform and then out along the lower topsail yard, around 21 metres above the main deck, with huge views across the Thames and London.

Getting down is the strangest bit, because you lean back, take your hands off the ropes and get winched gently to the deck. Does Dan's heart rate survive? Climbers need to be at least 8 years old, and you can find out more by searching for Cutty Sark Rig Climb Experience. 

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Bex sends Adam back to the 15th century as he visits the Loxwood Joust, an entire medieval fantasy kingdom hidden away in an ancient woodland at Loxwood, right on the West Sussex and Surrey border.

You park your car in the 21st century, walk through a marquee, and come out somewhere completely different!

Adam meets founder Morris Bacon, who runs the event with his son Danny, to hear how a small family medieval festival grew over 14 years into one of the biggest events of its kind in the UK, with an artistic director, actors as well as reenactors, and proper storylines you can join in with.

Along the way there are witches, a talking wall, a working replica of the rack from the Tower of London, blacksmiths and scribes to have a go with, archery, axe throwing, a jester, puppets, and a band all the way from Spain called Trobar de Morte.

Adam also watches the Meat Grinder, where around forty fighters in full armour charge at each other with swords and axes! The Loxwood Joust runs across the first three weekends of August.

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