[Ad- gifted experience] Our family, as you may know, really loves days out! With summer holidays here and in full swing, we’ve been looking at new places to take the children, that they’d enjoy and get out some of their energy at. In the last year, the children have had a big interested in trampolines – so much so that we purchased a trampoline for our backyard, so that they can go out and jump after school or during the day, making use of our generously sized yard space. With this in mind, everyone was pretty hyped to check out Jump In Ipswich, which was previously Bounce, but now has had a bit of a clean up!
Hick’s Orchard is a place I actually worked at, as a kid. I feel like everyone in the area has worked at Hick’s at one point or another. It’s one of those pick your own places, with a nice sized farm shop, a hard cider taste room and more all in one space. When I worked at Hick’s, I was always there for apple season – that’s when there is a lot going on as they are best known for their apples, really. But, this time of year, my sister wanted to go blueberry picking – and because I was in town, I figured I would go along too!
We love a bit of mini-golf at our household, so when summer came, we set off to a new golf course. This time, we went to Rascal Bay Adventure Golf in Brentwood. I’m not sure if Rascal Bay really knows what theme it want’s to be, and instead seems to combine pirates with dinosaurs, throwing in a lava zone and adding… cannibalism? Again, we didn’t really see how all of these connected in a small 18 golf hole place, but we were happy to be somewhere new none-the-less.
In Rascal Bay, you start off in a pirate area, going through holes that are themed around these. One of the first awesome holes we came too was a cannon that made a loud noise if you got the ball through it, spitting it out on the other side. It was a very good start to our golf time and proved to be Kai’s over-all favourite hole! Soon, we hit a hole with a photo opp in the middle – a pot cooking humans, which ended the pirate area for a bit, as we moved onto the jungle area. All of a sudden, the course was pretty focused on animals, the snake being Jupiter’s favourite hole. It looks like a really, impossibly twisty snake, but if you put your ball in you will hear a click and hear the ball being moved before shooting out the tail.
[Ad- gifted experience] I got the chance to go along to the new Boom Battle Bar at Lakeside as apart of their press day. The self-titled ‘Adventure Bar’ chain is an interesting twist on pubs, as if bars had gone down a different path than ‘more taps’ and instead focused on the pub games. Cribbage and horseshoes are out though, and while darts remain it does so with a twist and is joined by axe throwing, nail hammering and fun-fair style physical games.
Where I’m from we have a lot of pubs, there’s probably a pub for every 3k people in the town, and it’s a big town. We also have clubs, chain bars, and you can drink at the restaurants too. When you walk into most of the pubs though, be that your King’s Head, Red Lion or White Hart, they’re all pretty similar. Lots of tables and low seating, a row of stools at the bar, a tv in each room. A lot of these places feel tired (and tend to be filled with the retired) and certainly don’t feel welcoming – it feels like it’s uncommon for places to gain ‘regulars’ based on proximity, more so on association. Boom Battle Bar in Lakeside feels like a response to that, an attempt to try and make an actual destination that does a lot of things that pubs used to do decades ago; to be a place to entertain, meet up, play a few games and relax.
I feel that as an America, I have more of a connection to brands than most British people. I am brand loyal – once I like I brand I stick with it, no matter what. It’s just ingrained in my blood. When I saw the Museum of Brands in our National Trust membership book, I really wanted to go along! So when Dann surprised me with tickets to go, I was hyped! It’s worth mentioning that as apart of the National Trust, you get a discount on the price of the tickets – not free entry like several other places. But, the tickets are quite cheap anyway and well worth it.
