Selfie

A quick lego selfie took on the beach in Bray (Ireland) during our visit last week.

The Harry Potter Studio Tour experience

If, like me, you enjoy visiting the world of Harry Potter, either in the movies or the books, and you find yourself with an evening to kill in the UK, I highly recommend you plan this evening to kill a little in advance and get yourself some tickets to the Harry Potter Studio Tour experience. And I really do mean plan a little in advance, as the tickets do seem to sell out quite quickly in advance, depending on the time of the year. A general admission ticket is, at the time of writing, £29 for an adult and £21.50 for a child, but I would really suggest spending a little bit extra (£38.95 for an adult or £31.45 for a child) to get the full package that includes a souvenir guide and a digital guide too. We were lucky enough to be driven to the park, but there are public transport options.

The thing to remember is that this is not an amusement park, but a studio tour. It is a tour of the actual studios where (most of) the films were shot. And I think this is amazing. You walk through spaces where the actors walked, and can easily recognise your favourite (and not so favourite) scenes, props, etc. I took a LOT of photos during our extended tour, these are a couple of my favourites in no particular order.

The tour takes anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how long you spend looking at things. I could easily have spent an extra couple of hours inside, as there are a couple of exhibitions I feel I may have just glanced over, since I did not take at least 100 pictures from each angle. But then, as a fan, I think no amount of time is enough.

And then, of course, the tour ends in the gift shop, so make sure you take many many many pounds with you as you can buy anything from small fridge magnets to wands and capes, and you really do also want to sample the Butterbeer.

Excellent tour, excellent day out.

Wincanton and the Discworld Emporium

I started reading Terry Pratchet’s Discworld series of books when I was 17, which was a very, very long time ago indeed. And you can say I am something of a fan of his work, so, when I discovered the existence of the Discworld Emporium, I knew I had to make a small journey, you may even almost call it a pilgrimage, to the town of Wincanton in southern Somerset in England.

Wincanton is a little bit of a challenge to get to using only public transport, but not completely impossible, and well worth the effort too. You can take the train through to Templecombe from London Waterloo, and then from there hope to strike it lucky and find a cab to take you the rest of the way, which is between £12 and £15.

Of course, once we got there, I fell in love with the small town charm and the English country side. And did I mention the Discworld Emporium?

The Discworld books, and the other Pterry works, have formed a large part of my life for a very, very long time, and much of how I see the world is either influenced by the books or reflected in the books. So, going to the town of Wincanton and the Discworld emporium was, for me, a little bit like going to holy ground, a sacred space of sorts.

Despite having been a little bit of a Discworld fan for the better part of 30 years, I haven’t really done the typical fan thing and reached out to other fans, either on the internet or the outernet, nor have I been to conventions or meetups or the like. So meeting the lovely folk at the DE was both overwhelmingly intimidating and a little bit like meeting old friends for the first time. If you are lucky, like I was, to visit on a quiet day, you can spend hours chatting and laughing, mostly laughing. If you are a fan, be sure to take LOTS and LOTS of money, because you will want everything. I spent a good three hours absolutely mesmerised by every nook and cranny of the store, while my patient husband photographed everything – because I was simply too spellbound to take a single photograph.

And I got a very special shopping bag. You may say it is one of a kind, really.

If you’re a fan, there is no way you can visit the UK without visiting Wincanton.

After our extensive visit to the Discworld Emporium, we walked around the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul. Yes, we do have a thing for churches and the like, don’t we?

We just walked around the outside, really not wanting to intrude, but found some of the old gravestones really interesting.

The date on this one reads 1826.

And on this one, it looks like 1865.

And, of course, no visit to anywhere beautiful would be complete without the obligatory picture of a doorway. I am particularly fond of this doorway.