Best Half Term Adventures

With so much going on in London, it can sometimes be so overwhelming to choose what to do, that we end up staying at home and not going anywhere.  So we've picked out our favourite what's on ideas for this autumn to help sort out what's worth going along to.  

Some of the best holiday workshops in London for kids are at the Geffrye Museum and the John Soane Museum, where the children get to create something really proper. And this half term is no exception: 

SPOOKY FUN 

Take the shiny new Overground to Hoxton which stops right outside the back door of the Geffrye Museum. It  really couldn't be simpler. 

On Halloween itself you can scare yourself silly making a spooky hat  and a yummy chocolate apple. Get there early to guarantee a place as these cooking workshops are hot favourite. There are two sessions 10.30 - 12.30pm and 2 - 4pm.

 If you miss this one there are scores of other lovely free workshops everyday for children aged 5-15.



CLAY TIME

Tucked away behind the Inns of Court is the John Soane Museum (nearest tube Holborn) where you can leave your kids to get their hands mucky making a clay Toby jug to take home. This is a fabulous, creative all day workshop for children aged 7+ at a cost of £20. Wednesday 31st October  10.30 - 3pm.  Booking essential 0207 4404263 admin@soane.org.uk.  Children must bring their own lunch. 


PUMPKINS AND FACE PAINTS

Head out west and walk along the Thames river bank to the delectable Petersham Nurseries near Richmond for an afternoon of pumpkins, toffee apples and scary stories.  Treat yourselves to a slice of delicious cake.   

Tuesday 30th October , 3 - 5pm   £5

OUTDOOR ADVENTURE

Give the dinosaurs a miss and pack your backpack for the first ever pop up campsite at the Natural History Museum with free events, Camper vans, movie screens and popcorn, real Arctic tents and music.    27 October to 2 November, 11- 16.30 in the Darwin Centre Courtyard. 

TODDLER TIME

Shake your tambourine with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at one of their popular events for the very youngest music-lovers.  Sunday 4 November 2012.  At the Purcell Rooms, South Bank Centre.


PUPPET SHOW

Catch the last performances of The Tear Thief, who in the hours between supper and bedtime carries her waterproof, silvery sack as she steals the tears of every child who cries. Find out what she does with these tears at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre. Written by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. 

CELEBRITY WALKABOUT 

Love it or hate it, Madame Tussauds near Baker Street is a children's favourite and is curiously perfect for a whistle stop tour of British history, complete with Royals and celebrities. It's also London's oldest waxwork museum and was created back in the early 19th Century by a woman escaping from the French Revolution.   Look out for web deals on ticket prices.

DARK ARTS

A little further afield, but still close to London is the Harry Potter Film Studio Tour Find out the secrets behind how the Dark Arts were brought to life in the Harry Potter films this half term, learn about the make-up techniques, come face to face with the Death Eaters, go a lesson in the Potions classroom and have your picture taken flying on a broomstick.  Book tickets in advance.

And lastly, these are the most popular must-sees in London and are worth taking the time to queue up for:

UMBRELLAS UP

Random International: Rain Room at the Barbican, is the place to get  wet in this half term. Opens at 11am and the queues are 2 hours long.  So get there at 10am with a coffee and a bun and sit it out.  

TEEN DRAMA

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the National Theatre is the hot ticket this season. This GCSE novel by Mark Haddon is fabulously taken to the stage by War Horse Director Marianne Elliott.   Sold out but returns and day tickets available if you get there early.

I Capture the Castle........

Inspired by one of our favourite books, the young adult dreamy classic,  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, we jumped on a train from Fenchurch Street Station in search of the magnificent but ruined Hadleigh Castle high above the wild marshes of Canvey Island. 


Hopped off the train 40 minutes later at Benfleet station, having avoided the dreaded A13, and stepped through a wooden gate on the start of a footpath along the grassy valley floor towards Leigh-on-Sea and the coast. The path meandered gently passing ponds and flocks of geese, redshanks, herons and avocets out on the marshes. 

We climbed to the top of the short steep hill to Hadleigh Castle and its crumbling towers, famously painted by John Constable in 1829. It was once the official home of the King's wife an impressive list of former tenants include Catherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr. We had the place to ourselves with dramatic views across the Thames Estuary. The perfect place for a castle.

We headed out along the path between the two towers, over the stile at the bottom and after half a mile or so we arrived at Leigh-on-Sea with it charming cockle sheds and boats. Couldn't resist some fish and chips from the Mayflower chippy, so called because this is where the Pilgrim fathers boat originally came from,  and ate them on the beach. Home again before anyone had noticed we had gone. A perfect day.

Free Radicals in the City

On the way home from the cinema, we discovered we'd parked right next to Bunhill Fields Cemetery, burial ground of London's famous radicals and infamous dissenters.  We whiled away a few moments searching for the graves of Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe; William Blake, London poet and artist; Eleanor Coade, inventor of the famous Coade stone and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.  

Bunhill's name derives from 'Bone Hill' and a somewhat grissly story dating back to the sixteenth century when nearby St Paul's Cathedral had regular clear outs of its charnel house.  Great cartloads of bones were brought here every now and then from 1549 onwards and buried, unceremoniously, under a thin layer of soil.  The mound of bones soon rose high enough for the building of several windmills on top to catch the breeze.  

Listed as a plague pit for Londoners, it had a tradition of burial but the land was never consecrated by the Church.  It is unhallowed ground and is said to be the most haunted in London.  

In the 17th Century, the Fields were bought by a Mr Tindal who allowed anyone to be buried here as long as they could pay, no matter what their religion.  Word got out, and it soon became the graveyard of choice for non-conformists, Christians who did not want to be buried in a Church of England graveyard.  

Rapidly becoming a place of pilgrimage for London's radical reformers, and non-conformists, it was nicknamed the 'Campo Santo' of dissenters by the poet Robert Southey in the nineteenth century. In 1854, it was declared full, with over 120,000 people buried beneath its 4 acres.

The graveyard is crowded and crammed with a forest of mossy headstones, just a taste of what all London cemeteries must once have been like.  Most are behind railings, but most of the famous gravestones are not and when we were there, flowers lay at the base of many of them.  The pilgrimage continues.  

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.