The Heritage Centre

Its half way through the half term holiday and we're all going a little stir crazy. I had to pop in to Barnstaple to go to the post office so I decided to take the children into the Heritage Centre, mostly under protest I should add. I ignored the whines of "Can't we go to Playtime Adventure?" and bribed them with a trip to the cinema tonight instead.

The Heritage Centre is situated on The Strand, the road that runs along the river Taw. The area directly in front of it is home to the Millenium Mosaic which charts Barnstaples history back 1000 years to when it was made a borough by Athlestan. It is generally also home to large groups of skateboarders, but the weather today must have driven them away.

Inside the centre the tale of Barnstaple's history is also told, starting in Anglo-Saxon times, focusing quite a lot on Tudor times, mentioning briefly the Civil War and ending in the 18th Century with Barnstaple born playwright John Gay. Adult tickets are £3.50, children £2 and under 7's go free. The children were given a quiz on a clipboard and a pencil to record their answers but finding these answers involved listening to the recording of the models telling their stories and once they'd pressed the button to start the recording they generally lost interest in this. Much more interesting was the task of looking for the 15 white plastic mice that were hidden in the exhibits. When we got to the end and had only found 10 we had to go round again. We still only managed to find 13.

Other points of interest were remaking the broken pottery plates magnetised to the wall, dressing up in costumes, and doing a brass rubbing. By the time we'd finished my nine year old daughter said, "OK this isn't boring after all".