Cadbury World

If I'd have thought it through I'd have insisted a bit more strongly that the hairdresser cut more of Tilly's hair off. I've just spent quite some time washing out the marshmallow and chocolate.

This weekend we thought the kids hadn't had enough chocolate and went to Cadbury World.

I have to say it was pretty good really. The only negative was that the actual factory wasn't running so we didn't see chocolate being made or packaged which we think is pretty poor. It would have made the whole thing mean more to small people. But other than that we had a great day.

The whole place is a bit random. The first section - well, think Yorvik for cacao. Then there was a sort of social history section where someone did an uncanny impersonation of Dame Edna while dressed as a nineteenth century aristocrat. After that we learnt about how chocolate is made and the seats shook us about. Add one small car ride through dancing beans, a decent playground and a magic monkey and you are pretty much there.  Honestly it was only chocolate we'd been consuming.

The most interesting bit for us grown ups was a toss up between reliving 1980s advertisements ("A finger of fudge is just enough...) and learning about Mr Cadbury's Quaker ideals and the community he created around the factory with a village called "Bournville". I genuinely had forgotten or maybe never knew and it was frankly fascinating. He let women learn to swim in work time (I have no idea why but how brilliant).

He even moved a tudor manor house into Bournville to save it. So we added a bit of historical culture into the day too and the girls tried on armour and played quoits. It's a lovely place especially in the sunshine.

The worst bit of the day was Tilly discovering that wine gums do not go with melted chocolate. She bit her own tooth and a bit of screaming and increased wobbliness ensued. But nothing that a bar of dairy milk wouldn't solve. Which was good because we'd been given four curly wurlies, four bars of dairy milk and four crunchies before lunchtime...