Onward to adventure!

We're currently about two thirds of the way through a project on the ancient Romans* so it seemed like a good time to pay a visit to Vindolanda**.

Vindolanda, for those who don't know, is a Roman fort along Hadrian's wall.
As well as the archaeological site and ongoing dig, there are two museums: one at the site, and the Roman Army Museum nearby.
 The Vindolanda Charitable Trust's website recommends visiting the Roman Army Museum first, then going on to the fort itself afterwards so, not having visited either before, that is what we did.

Before we went I had stocked up on worksheets, downloaded and printed off from the education section of the trust's website***, in addition to which we were handed the museum's own treasure hunt to complete, so we were sure of having plenty to do.
 
First stop was the School room, which is set up for school trips, with seats for a classroom, a video "lesson" from a dummy teacher and various interesting facts and fables set out around the walls.
 I was pleasantly surprised to find this room open to the public, as the website seemed to imply that it was intended for use by school groups only.
The presentation was, in fact, clearly geared towards school groups, with references to the "class" and "your teacher", but this in no way reduced the enjoyment the girls found in it.
 Once the dummy teacher had finished expounding, we searched the walls for the answers to our many worksheets, took special note of the bust of Pliny the elder who "died when he breathed in Mount Vesuvius, Mummy", ignored my exposition on the subject of Seneca, and were off to the next gallery.

The next room contained two more films as well as with various models of roman soldiers alongside appropriate artefacts.
 The films were reasonably entertaining, but were a lot to sit or stand still for, after the long car journey to the wall.
Unfortunately the answer to one of the questions on Eleanor's worksheet was only available in the less interesting of said films.
 After missing the information twice, due to bad timing, we decided to return later to find that answer****.
 So, on to the next room to dress up as legionaries, listen to a recording (no film!) about the life of Emperor Hadrian and discover, to Eleanor's horror, that Hadrian had never been to Sardinia.
Uniforms returned to their place we next took our seats for yet another film: this one a three dimensional offering on the life of a Roman soldier on the wall.
It was a very good film, in point of fact, and kept everyone's attention nicely, but by the time it was over we all seemed rather sick of watching things we could have downloaded on YouTube.
 So, on to the next room.
There was a film playing in this room too, but I have no idea what it was about as we all ignored it.
Instead we wandered through various army artefacts and other displays, on equipment, weaponry, Roman food, and the number of people actually on the wall (as opposed to off sick) at any given time; translated the password of the day from Latin to English, and tracked down the last answers for our worksheets.
 By which time everyone was getting hungry and we were more than ready to hand in the treasure-hunt and round up some lunch.

After lunch we hied us to Vindolanda itself

The site was awesome, in the proper sense of the word, and it was incredible just to walk around it, looking at the various ruined buildings, trying to figure out what they were, reading the descriptions of what historians think they were, and squelchily discovering that the ancient spring still ran just fine.
 We rambled about for a while, filling in the second lot of worksheets, before happening upon the active dig.
We watched politely for a while, quietly discussing the archaeology and guessing at what various finds might be, until one of the archaeologists came up and offered to show us some of the day's finds.
 She explained the various pieces she had set aside: some unrelated pieces of pots, a cow's tooth and a game piece, then invited us to ask questions.
Alas, under Eleanor's inquisition she was forced to admit that they had yet to find a mosaic, butshe was able to tell us that the building they were working on was a shrine and tomb*****, unless it wasn't, as they wouldn't really know until they finished excavating, if ever.
 Despite the lack of extraordinary finds the girls seemed as thrilled as we were to look over the dig and appeared to happily accept my statement that archaeologist was "the coolest and least glamourous job ever".

And then they rampaged on.
 We discovered replica shops with recorded dialogue, a replica nymphaeum (Eleanor's favourite thing of the day) a tea-shop rather better than the one we had lunch in, another museum (this time with more artefacts****** but less films) and, finally, replica buildings of fortifications from the wall itself.
 Having scaled these (from the inside, thank gods), our now decidedly weary family headed back to the car park and set off for home.

It was surprisingly hard to leave.

Should we go up again I suspect we'll make a few changes to our itinerary, such as visiting the fort first, leaving the museum till we're tired enough to want to sit down and watch things, instead of haring all over the place.
We might even find somewhere to stay for the night.
After all, we didn't even visit Housesteads, this time round.






*Which has involved all manner of fun that I may go into later.
Or I may just post the photographs of the Roman feast with which we plan on ending this project.

**We would have liked to go to Pompeii and Herculaneum, since the tentative plan for this year is Romans, followed by Archaeology, followed by volcanoes, but Vindolanda is rather cheaper and therefore actually achievable.

*** There are sheets for both the museum and the fort, these are labelled for particular age-groups, but it's worth reading them through before you print them off as all children have different strengths and weaknesses.
 In the girls' case Eleanor was perfectly happy with the sheets labelled as being for nine to eleven year olds, while Phoebe worked through the sheets for seven to eight year olds with a lot of help from her daddy.

****We did, we still missed it and settled for talking to her on the subject instead.

***** Everything at Vindolanda seems to be a something and tomb: we saw a temple and tombs, shop and tombs, house and child's grave and a mausoleum.
Given the apparent local propensity for just shoving people in the nearest temple or burying them under the tiles, we assumed that either the mausoleum belonged to someone terribly impressive, or the residents of Vindolanda were curiously morbid.


****** Including roman horse armour, which was Eleanor's favourite thing on those occasions that the nymphaeum wasn't.

Science

On Monday we went to the Science Museum.

 This, alas, is no longer the museum of my youth: the amazing hands-on displays I remember from childhood are all gone, replaced with new child centred exhibitions: The Garden, Pattern Pod and Launchpad.
 Of these The Garden is supposedly the one for Eleanor's age-group.
It's a free play area in which children are supposed to explore and make discoveries assisted by red-jumpered Explainers* there are areas for sound based play, lights for shadow puppetry, a gantryesque area with beanbags (presumably to assist in the discovery of gravity) and a complicated water table.
 The water table was certainly a hit with Eleanor, who enjoyed making whirlpools and seeing the affects of opening and closing various water gates.
It was also by far the most popular part of the exhibition in general: I don't think I ever saw it without a crowd of children surrounding it on all sides.
For the most part, though, The Garden didn't really seem to impress her that much: she claimed to be having fun, but gave the impression that she said it was fun because she thought it should be, rather than because it really was.


 Pattern Pod, once we managed to find the wretched place**, was much more to her taste.
Intended for children aged between five and eight, it is another interactive area, this time for set activities rather than free play.
There was a station full of boxes with lights that lit up if you followed the correct sequence of events, another where you could grow fractals from "seed"***, and another where you could create mandala-like patterns on a screen.
 Eleanor was particularly impressed by an exhibit on movement which required her to put on a variety of funny shoes before attempting to follow in the footsteps of a crawling baby, a dog, a duck, and a hopping robot.

She also enjoyed experimenting in a small chamber which played music for the occupant to dance to, while filming their movements and converting them into patterns on a large screen.
Well, she like the dancing anyway.

We failed to locate Launchpad entirely, which was rather a shame as there was supposed to be a demonstration of explosive science there which looked like it might be fun.
 On the bright side, though, this gallery is meant to be for those aged over eight, so I don't know how much Eleanor would have enjoyed it anyway.

We did, after several detours past clocks, flying machines****, and the Planets Suite by Holst***** find the Who Am I exhibition which looked amazing but was so crowded that we could barely get near any of the stations.
 Alas I may never know if my daughters are optimists or pessimists, or how they would survive various challenges.
The only station available was a very serious one about whether we should keep samples of everyone's DNA on file or not.
Eleanor asked what DNA was and, when I had told her, said that she thought it was a good idea as then they would have some to fix her with if she ever got broken.
I'll explain again when she's older.
 She was quite interested by the displays though, especially one on forensics which contained a skeleton "Like the dinosaurs but human", and one of genetically abnormal stuffed animals which I can only assume they put in especially for me.

And then, before we could look at the Difference Engine; or find the strange model, like a wooden game of Operation, in the Medicine exhibition; or even -horrors- look around the shop, it was time to go home.



*One of whom offered me a portable seat when I went in, I take it children can spend quite a lot of time in there.

** I suspect we would have seen far more that actually interested us if we'd had a better time navigating: the Science Museum is huge, and complicated, and laid out apparently at the whim of an insane artist, the children's areas, for example are not adjacent as you might expect, but dotted about the building, and to get into Pattern Pod you actually have to go past the ticket desk of the IMAX cinema.

*** Plastic seeds, each with a simple symbol inscribed on it.
When inserted into a box the symbol appeared on a screen above and "grew" into a fractal pattern

**** Including a missile.
Eleanor asked if it was for going into space on like Apollo 11, I said no, and explained its purpose.
Eleanor thought about this and told me that she thought it was nasty and silly.

***** No, really, it has its own gallery.
For now anyway.

A Momentous Occasion

Last Sunday we went to the Natural History Museum.
 It was the first time we had been there with Eleanor* and to be honest we were probably more excited than she was.
After all, she only knew that we were going to go to a museum with dinosaurs, we were going to take our little girl to the Natural History Museum.
A moment like that deserves its own soundtrack: something deep and impressive and full of major chords, some that makes Thus Spake Zarathustra sound like Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
It deserves to be announced on the national news, on the World Service, on a specially recorded beam transmission to be directed into space in order to make contact with alien life and tell them all about the day our eldest daughter met a diplodocus.
It deserves an all-caps, bold, underlined, italicised proclamation: THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM!




It was wonderful.
 The Museum has changed somewhat since last we were there but there's still a fossilised tree** in the grounds, and the walls are still covered with marvellous stone animals.
More importantly: the first thing you see when you go in is still a skeletal diplodocus.
His name is Dippy.
Eleanor liked him very much.

Before she could be introduced to Dippy, Eleanor had to be equipped with her Explorer's Backpack, which the museum provides free of charge for young visitors.
Each of the backpacks, which come complete with pith helmets and binoculars: the better to explore with, contains a set of activities for one section of the museum.
Eleanor chose the Mammals backpack which, naturally enough, required us to pay lots of attention to the stuffed specimens in the Animals Gallery.
Those animals have always given me the creeps***.
 The actual activities were excellent: the first involved identifying a mystery animal from clues provided (a set of teeth, a claw and a piece of fur) the second was about spotting the differences between a real jaguar and a picture of one (the difference seems to be that the cartoon had not been removed for cleaning) and the third was a game of Name that Mammal.
Eleanor loved it, creepy stuffed animals and all.

She also loved the fossilised dinosaurs, and the model dinosaurs (which she persisted in seeing as "baby ones"), and the animatronic dinosaurs once she had got away from them.
 She was then quite affectionate towards a demonstration on prehistoric plant-life, some model dinosaur nests with actual model-baby-dinosaurs and the step-by-step display on palaeontology.
She claimed to be rather fond of the display on the human body too, but she was flagging by then and wanted to go home.
So we had lunch.
Which she loved.
After lunch she was good enough to demonstrate her tenderness towards the Arthropod Gallery, in order that Richard should get his share of the shuddering heeby jeebies too.
 Then we wandered through the shop (everything in which, we were assured, she would love), handed in her backpack, and as she was tired, decided to skip the Science Museum and head back to our hotel.

By Bus.


*Or Phoebe for that matter.
I don't think she was terribly impressed though.

** The tree is behind a glass wall these days though.
This made me rather sad.

***Where the word creeps is used to denote the screaming abdabs.