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?!

isnt that what is generally called the chippy Hula

No - that was the worst thing - there were no free samples of frites iirr.

Yes, we did go to the chocolate museum - at least I got to taste chocolate there!

Mumsnet tour bus should take in this

this thread reminds me of pippin and aunty mabel

That website is a work of art, OF ART I tell you. You can "plan your visit" in advance! Gosh.

Next time I am in Keswick I am determined to go.

Off the A30 at Liftondown there is the Antique Chair Museum - I always thought that sounded like the most boring place in the universe. Wrong, wrong, wrong....

Though I shouldn't judge until I have been there etc etc.

I'm bloody buying that 'bollocks to alton towers' book, brilliant

And reserve tickets for me on the MN crap attractions tour, I don't care about the price, I would sell DH to go on it.

I think that I might have been. I'm pretty sure that we visited a pencil factory on the way home from a school trip when I was at primary school. The trip was to somewhere in the lakes so would have been nearby. In fact I remember buying a pencil!

OK. I have been. My parents have a place near Keswick, I went there when I was 10 or so (?) I'm now 33. It's been going a long time, so they must be doing something right.

There isn't a lot to do in Keswick if it's pouring down with rain.

I took ds a few years back when we were up in the lakes camping, we enjoyed it. We also went down the mine on the tour.

The shop is great, if you like drawing. I found the museum quite interesting, as many other people I never wondered how the pencil was invented, I didn't even thought it was invented in England and so recently, someway I expected they had been around forever (don't know why as they are obviously the product of the industrial revolution). I found the spy pencils quite interesting too. But what I enjoyed the most was just being able to sit and draw here and there using the pencils left around.

Now, I am awaiting to be corrected and be told that there is nothing stupid about a British Lawnmower Museum. (for those interested, you can find it in Southport)

I went loads as a kid and loved it (family nearby). Whenever we visited we went and got a new tin of pencils. I went once as an adult a few years ago and it is not bad actually, dc were quite interested in the exhibits about how graphite gets turned into pencils and how it can also be diamonds etc. I have certainly been to crapper museums. Keswick is a nice place too. Give it a try!

How can you have a cock museum? I wasn't aware they had evolved much

The pencil museum holds a special place in my heart. When I was a teenager one day in our group of friends someone started to tell a story. The story went "We were driving back down to the Midlands the other day after visiting family, and suddenly Mum said-" and then he collapsed with an unexplainable fit of the giggles so strong that he was unable to finish the story, so we started making numerous suggestions of what his mum might have said, ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous. (The only one I can remember involved bodies in the boot ). Poor friend was crying with laughter, by the time he managed to choke out a sentence, it was "This is going to be such a letdown now. She said "I think there's a pencil museum around here somewhere! And I don't know why it was so funny." Of course all of us were on the floor by now.

...You probably had to be there.

OP, if you like crap tourist attraction websites, you MUST see www.waltzingwaters.co.uk/. It's fabulous. My favourite part is the enticing little picture of the teashop.

Keswick has a local museum too, where the main attraction is a dead cat. I kid you not.

I have been to a museum where the star attraction was the worlds biggest pear drop. It was in Skelmesdale. Explains it all really.

Oh and the probably made up testimonies. They're worth a look.

OOOH, I once went to a museum about the Sabden Treacle mines. It was two rooms with some little dolls in them.

I have also been to the Sellafield visitors centre several times. One time for free, since we went and it wasn't open, so Mum wrote a letter of complaint and we were given free tickets.

We have a museum across the road from our house that is open for two days a year. It is always crowded on those days too, I don't know why they don't open it more. Last time I went they did a march, with mining banners and a brass band, from the Library to the museum (it is an old coal mine winding gear, a local landmark) and then we all looked at the museum and then had a picnic on the landscaped slag heap outside. It was ace :)

Ooh, Sellafield. Home of several school trips.

Has anyone ever been to that one where there is a waterfall that turns things into stone? Something to do with mineral deposits. It has a woman dressed up as a witch and everything. Gah, what is it called? I think it's in Yorkshire.

There is one in Newcastle that is actually quite good, but the bit the Geordies all love is a big indoor boat. You can't even go on it, it's just there. They all get all misty eyed at it too. I don't really get it tbh.

I grew up in Lancashire. Once you have seen one old weaving machine, you have seen them all. Ditto endless trips to Welsh mines. My mum used to work nights, so my Dad would be tasked entertaiing three children, in the rain, for free or cheap. Lots and lots of trips to obscure towns to see even more obscure tourist attractions/pound shops. Accrington was a particular favourite for some reason.

also, just remembered I was wrong. Worlds biggest pear drop is, in fact, in Oswoldtwistle, not Skem. Apologies.

My Mum and Dad went to this museum. They brought me back a pencil shaped pencil case with 'Pencil Museum' written on the side. Bloody triumphant!

APOB - Mother Shipton's Cave. It's in Knaresborough... been there too

Oh My God the website!!!!

I'm sorry if this has been covered - but seriously! They've clearly got some really experienced, upmarket web guy to basically polish the shit! The pictures of the paper mache models (in a cave?????!) cleverly lit to look terrifyingly scary! And the 400 year old hand model holding the named pencil! Oh this has really cheered me up! Could they not have found a nicer hand anywhere in Keswick?!