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?!

www.acaseofcuriosities.com/pages/01_2_00potter.html

Here- apparently it got broken up and sold at Bonhams in 2003- boo! hiss!. The government was under pressure to buy it, but I imagine Tony didn't feel he could ban hunting and then preserve these beauties.

Dearest Mutt, of course I'd heard of Keswick, my love. Someone upthread posted a useful wee explanation of the (admittedly not side-splitting) jest. HTH :)

Bride that looked great - I love the fact that the Victorians were so determinedly un-squeamish. What a crime it closed . I have some Victorian moths in a wooden case and would love a taxidermy bird, but there's a lot of Shoreditch wankers round these here parts driving up the prices, the speccy sods.

Hehe Bloofer, trust me it is impossible to look remotely sexy as a serving wench.. Several metres of fabric gathered round any sized waist is not a great look for anyone, top it with a mob cap and well, say no more. Plus my dress was pink and white striped so I looked like a giant stick of rock. Now, dressing as a stable boy was another kettle of fish

We used to serve pasties from a hot cupboard-y thing and the number of times a customer would say 'didn't have those in Victorian times' and I'd want to reply 'didn't have cans of coke either but you've asked for 3 of those'... Ditto the 'bet you'll have big muscles at the end of the summer' from all the folks buying scoop ice-cream... Sigh, happy times!

Speaking of deformed museum exhibits - I could recommend the Chernobyl museum but perhaps I won't - all a bit odd.

Hang on a cotton-picking minute here - there's a Chernobyl Museum ?

I was genuinely LOLing at the stick of rock but I'm not now!

Chernobyl Museum

Yup, Chernobyl Museum... You have to go to Kiev, mind you.

Utterly tragic enough without the political commentary which accompanies many of the displays, in a 'wasn't me guv, not our fault, dreadful sabotage' kind of way.

I went in 1996 but it doesn't seem to have changed much... To be honest, coming out we could have done with a nice kitten wedding diorama to lighten the mood.

What is 'Kiev'? Is it North?

It's unbearable to think about really, isn't it. The Guardian did a big piece on it a while back when there was the nuclear leak in Japan - it's easy to forget that the repercussions go on and on and on. I see Germany has now committed to getting rid of all its nuclear power stations...wonder when/if we'll follow suit.

I want my own personal kitten diorama...

The Bride went to Potters Museum in Arundel about 20 years ago wondered what had happened to it.

Not to be confused with this Potter's place where my elderly parents used to have a day out for a nice bowl of soup.

www.hop-skip-jump.com/

Were in the lakes recently and thought about the pencil museum as I love Caren D'Ache pencils, used to spend hours arranging them in their box and occasionally did some drawing. It seemed pricy for a family though and as it's basically an attachment to a gift shop I thought they could have just charged 50p each and recouped the money through more people then visiting their gift shop.
Did go to Lakeland Plastics though to stock up on spatulas and tins.
Used to visit mother Shipton's cave alot when younger. There seemed loads to do in Knaresborough. There was a house carved into the stone wall you could visit and a zoo. When we went it said in the little book of her prophesies that the world would end in 1984. Was disillusioned when we went back post 1984 and I saw they had just moved the date in the book forward a bit and changed the rhyme.

Just remembered it was 1981 not 4.
"The world finally to an end shall come,
In nineteen hundred and eighty one."

I see your pencil museum and raise you the Salt Museum
It's changed it's name but it will ALWAYS be the Salt Museum locally.

IShitYouNotTiggaxx

How do charming, gently mocking threads like this always get hijacked by humorless posters that just 'don't get it'?
There's always a spoilsport.
Let me go on to gift shops. I love a good gift shop and always buy some tat something nice to remind me of my holiday.Fridge magnets are my favourite, you can never have enough fridge magnets.

The Salt Museum? Peppered with interesting exhibits no doubt. A condiment to compliment. Lacking vinegar perhaps.

Oh dear. I need help.

WE should start a museum - but what would it hold?

Tigga is there a chance to go down a bit of a salt mine in a little shuttlebus type thing?

Am laughing at the amended prophecy

I don't know Lady - it's a shame, isn't it? But I think some of the more erm, chippy posters have a tendency to go around MN generally being a bit snappy and humourless so I hope the Pencil Museum doesn't take it personally....

Now then, I am afraid being a touch on the plump side myself it's always the personalised packets of fudge that get me. If you're really lucky they're labelled with gorgeous black-and-white engravings of the museum front or the local village . When I was a kid that was pretty much the highlight of our Suffolk/Scottish holidays. Then I'd retreat to the tent/B&B with my fudge and an Agatha Christie and spend a happy sticky afternoon working out whodunnit. You know sometimes I honestly think I shall never be that happy again!

You need to go to the Marine Heritage Centre in Beer (Dorset).
It's got a piece of fishing rope and a plastic lobster.AND it's interactive; you're allowed to touch the rope AND the lobster.

Punk

Oh Oh Oh Jemima, that's reminded me - my number 1 favourite thing to do when holidaying in small seaside towns and villages is to go to the Lifeboat Museum! There is ALWAYS a lifeboat museum with poignant black and white photographs of grizzled turn-of-the-century Lifeboat Crews, and a barnacle-encrusted Civil War cannonball found on the seabed, and Interesting Glass Bottles!

Happy Days Bloofer..
The day we went there were two German couples in the shed heritage centre for over two hours.
I think they were just trying to get their heads round the whole thing.

Love this thread! Because you said what some friends and I were saying when we were on holiday in the Lakes. We thought there should be a website recommending the best British attractions and if you went to all of them (proof needed!) You'd get a prize (of a pencil maybe??)
This has made me want to visit my local museum in Newbury, just to see what gems are hidden there. If its really good I'll post back
:)

oh LadyBeagle - how you tease a poor girl who doesn't have a metal fridge door :(

2Rebecca I love that Mother Shipton simply changed the date for the Apocalypse - Harold Camping has obviously been to Knaresborough and taken that particular idea.

Biggle we need to raise funds to set up this website, methinks. 'Hidden Gems of the British Isles'. Or 'hidden pebbles' in some cases I suppose, but nonetheless precious...

I live in Bethnal Green. I wonder what my most local attraction is...

I have had an idea for a short story from this gorgeous thread. Thank you ladies. We should celebrate the eccentric, the try hard little places, those yummy boxes of fudge that may or may not be past their sell-by dates - yes, it will be a form of Rapture. Heaven will be a series of amusing museums with angels giggling at the front doors...

I've not read through the whole thread so I apologise if I am not the only one but YES I have been there and what is more I have a smashing photograph of myself next to the world's largest pencil! Fab.

Hurrah! We have been Muses!

Punk are you on the Creative Writing threads? I think I might've recognised your name from there. Obviously I could just go and look, what but can I tell you, I'm a lazy fecker. At any rate, I think we all deserve to see your tale

If heaven is a series of eccentric museums, each with their own particular flavour of fudge, and a friendly lady in a white cap selling lavender ice cream, and possibly a slightly moth-eaten donkey in a pen out the back, then I for one am going to resolve to be A Good Girl from now on.

Lazy fecker! I am indeed on/in the CW area. How dare you ask to see my tail - I'm not a man, you know. Oh - my tale. Well when it wins a huge huge prize I will make a nauseating speech and cry so much that I wash Margaret Atwood all the way back to Canada.

Thank you all.