Pendon Museum {Abingdon, Oxfordshire}

On a recent weekend away we needed somewhere to stop off on the way back. As it was raining heavily our usual National Trust choices were ruled out and so we looked for somewhere different that the children would enjoy – and found the Pendon Museum.

The Pendon Museum transports you back to the 1930s, showing you fictional landscapes made up of incredible, realistic buildings based on actual buildings from the 1920s and 30s countryside.

The children loved how each scene showed a completely different way of life – no street lights or traffic and instead just a handful of cars, washing on lines and back gardens full of vegetables and animals.

Through the landscape trains travelled, taking passengers and good from one place to another and LP and Little Man loved spotting the trains as they appeared and making up stories about where they were going and what their purpose was.

The same happened with people – they created a whole backstory and loved the figures of children they saw and the tiny details – post boxes, water pumps and even missing slates on house roofs.

The Pendon Museum isn’t a full day out. LP and Little Man were done in an hour but Little Man happily went round a second time after we’d stopped for lunch. The Pendon Museum sell hot drinks and snacks and have a cafe room where they were happy for us to eat our packed lunch – it was one of the friendliest places we have been to and full of staff who are really passionate about the trains and the landscape that they look after and help create.

Any train loving child will love the Pendon Museum and it was the perfect rainy day pit stop for us. There was a lot to look at, lots to learn and the children really enjoyed it.