AIBU to ask if you've been to the Keswick Pencil Museum?

[BlooferLady]

Oh! Oh! I am HOWLING with laughter!

They have the most fantastic website - it's priceless, I can't see through my tears -

From 'Plan Your Visit' - "Explore the museum before you come and discover all the great things to see and do. You can journey through the history of pencils and pencil making!"

It's only a tenner for a family ticket but for £15 you can visit the bungalow museum as many times as you like during the year!

And the cafe is called SKETCHERS!!!!!

And there's a genuinely spine-chilling wax doll stuck helplessly in a cavern underground - WTF is he doing, mining for those erasers you stick on the end???

Reassuringly, they can take large numbers, and there's a Drawing Zone where you can get hands-on with the pencils

Oh Lord I'm laughing so hard I've nearly thrown up my prawns - surely some MNetter has been there? Is it as AWESOME as it looks?!

My parents and I used to vacation in the Lake District every summer, and we always had a chuckle at the thought of a Pencil Museum. Then one rainy day we went in. It was actually quite fantastic and we really enjoyed ourselves!

Snuff Museum - not to be sneezed at.

I did go to the Radio Museum in Oxford - when the Ashmolean was closed. Yes it was peculiarly fun...

I've been, I enjoyed it, in a quiet sort of way. I would take the DC.

In birmingham we have a pen museum. For anyone who doesn't know where birmingham is we are slightly south of keswick.

I'm a thick southerner though Alistron, couldja point it out on a roadmap please? Ta

I hope someone's keeping a list of all this. I'm waiting for recommendations for Norwich!

I wish I could click Like on your comment alistron :)

Aries are you encouraging people to mock my low intellect and poor grasp of geography?

Of course not. She was being sarcastic, wasn't she?

Wasn't she?

Weren't you Alistron?

Besides, you have so much other grasp of Intellectual Stuff, that I can just dream of knowing

Besides, I bet Lakes Piss Off Woman wouldn't be able to locate my home town. BET.

Oi! Virgowoo you leave the Museum of Witchcraft alone - it's bloody good AND it survived the flood where the Jesus Crispies opposite got washed away. It's NOT Kernish withcraft it's all witchcraft ACTUALLY [huffy emoticon] They let dogs in as long as they are well behaved.

They have a very nice Crowley exhibit - he DID like the sound of his own voice.

Totally gets it cos I'm Pagan!!!!!

BlooferLady the Salt Musuem could only be improved by looking at it from the bottom of a shaft - did it start to end in just under 5 minutes and I read all the exhibit tags!

FriendOfTheBoscastleMuseumOfWitchcraftTiggaxx

Can I just say Tigga that I for one have admired from afar your quirky sign-offs and am glad to be corresponding with you :)

WandersOffBlushingSlightlyTiggaxx

When we went to the Dracula Museum in whitby towards the end as you scuttle along in the dark a real person dressed up not very convincingly jumped out at us and frightened us. Well that was the idea.

Tomb of Terror - Rhyl. Nothing else to say really....

keswick is one of my fave places on earth...

and yes i've been to the pencil museum...

although, only once....

.. and i've been going to keswick every year for the past 12 years..

I love a good website tho'... particularly for the purpose of planning school trips... i'm a primary teacher you see....

(which you probably spotted though my excellent use of punctuation here )

Stockport (Cheshire - still northern) has a hat museum I wonder if they bid on Fergie Junior's funny hat? They also have a tourist attraction based around underground caves which were used in WW2.
I don't know anything more than that, I need to get out more!

Damn predictive text! We went to Keswick last year and didn't go to the pencil museum (I was tempted to go just to annoy xh who loved pencils (!)). We're going back there this year so I just texted dp about this thread, but according to my predictive text, we should avoid the penile museum as it's underwhelming...

He's going to wonder what I've been drinking, isn't he?

Although, I'd be more tempted to go there than the pencil museum...

Woah There Tigga!

Wasn't taking the p, it was supposed to be a recommendation.
I've been a couple of times and thought it was quirky & interesting.

I went to the pencil museum years ago and I'm still having the nightmares.

I can recommend an equally worthwhile museum to visit in Portugal. Go to Silves just in from the coast on the Algarve, ignore the medieval moorish castle at the top of the hill. and instead wonder at the waste of EU development money which is the award winning Cork Museum. Seriously we have never laughed as much as we did when we viewed various baskets of wine bottle corks at different stages of their manufacturing process.

The above museums pale into insignificance when one considers the Slate, nay, the National Slate Museum and of course the Royal Army Dental Corp Museum.

I've not had the pleasure of the dental museum, but I'm afraid that the slate museum is actually a really brilliant, fascinating, and wonderful place. Truly. You can hike round an enormous slate quarry, which is as alien as a moonscape. And the old workshops are full of original lovely bits of machinery just lying around. There is a huge waterwheel. And there are nice men, not wearing mob caps, who are former slateworkers and tell you how it was all done before we lost our old industries and imported rubbish slate from Spain and China. You can have a go at splitting slates, which is very satisfying.

And there is a slate giftshop of course.

If we are going outside the UK, I give you the parasite museum

My kinda place!

I like the gift shop: 'the best number is a black shirt with a ?raised?

tapeworm across the front. You can feel it!'

Another cracker is the fishing museum in Zug and the history of some caves in Switzerland. The cave one was super odd, it was partly mountain rescue (although the only thing on show was a wicker stretcher) and the fishing museum has virtually nothing in it except some small trout.

the fishing museum has virtually nothing in it except some small trout

I don't know why - but that is my fav quote of the week.

I love the Keswick Pencil Museum! I used to beg my parents to take me to it when my sister and I were little - the smell of freshly-sharpened pencils and gently steaming anoraks drying as despondent tourists walk round trying to dry off is seared into my memory. I'm also quite fond of it because the invention of quality drawing pencils falls squarely into the category of 'Things Cumberland Used to Be Really Good At but Was Eventually Eclipsed At by T'Big Cities', (see also, rugby league). And who doesn't love a new HB pencil?

bloofer, you should make a trip of it, and take in the Sheep Centre in Cockermouth, the Rum Story in Whitehaven, and, only if you have enough breath left to be taken away, the Maryport Aquarium.

Hello Figgy. Haven't seen you for a while.