| Bakes, Books And My Boys

A Splendifirous Summer with Roald Dahl & Mr Kipling

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Just before we went on holiday we were invited to the fabulous world of the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden near Aylesbury, Bucks. This summer the phizz-whizzing museum has joined forces to give you A Splendifirous Summer with the scrumptious Mr Kipling.

Their scrummy brands have joined forces to offer you limited edition Roald Dahl packaging & competition exclusively with Tescos until September. With every purchase there is a unique code inside to enter on the Mr Kipling site to see if you have won a whizz-popping prize! From tickets to his plays to games each prize is superb – we won today a selection of his books!

The packaging cant help you smile and when produced out of your bag on a rainy day or a picnic at the beach is sure to make the whole family smile! Dory-Hunky angel slices, Gloriumptious Cherry Bakewells or even Fantastic French fancies, the whole range feature you’re favourite characters from his world!

You can head over to the Mr Kipling Inspire site to inspire your summer holidays. Matilda, the BFG, the Enormous Crocodile, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory & Fantastic Mr Fox all have some brilliant ideas and activities to do to help you fill 5 minutes or an afternoon. Do head over and see how to Levitate a Ball like Matilda, Invent some Gobble Funk with the BFG or even decorate an Oompla Loompa or create a fox tail! There’s something for everyone!

The event was held at the museum and while adoring all of Roald Dahls books I don’t think I was quite such a firm fan till I visited the museum! The boys were incredibly fascinated by his childhood and war years. The museum offers a tour around the village that Roald Dahl loved and lived in & whose buildings appear in many of his books. Being a huge fab of his Revolting Rhymes & Dirty Beasts they loved the reading centre where they got involved in acting out their favourite – Red Riding Hood! I highly highly recommend all adults in reading these dark but perfect takes on our well known fairy tales. The café carried on this wonderful museum with special treats on the museum devoted to Roald Dahls amazing museum.

We were incredibly lucky to be given a voucher for the shop we ended up buy & listening to Boy – Roald Dahls story of his childhood on an audio CD on the way home. The boys refused to get out of the car as they enjoyed it so much. We had to purchase Going Solo quick – it made for a perfectly quiet & incredibly fascinating trip down to Cornwall. We loved the museum – thank you Mr Kipling for such a lovely day, picnic & such scrummy cakes! I cant wait to visit the museum again!

lifestyle

Interesting facts you didn’t know about London buses – Boost your knowledge

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Did you know that in London, buses always had a long and interesting history? It was in 2014 that the Mayor of London launched the year of the bus, thereby celebrating the iconic symbol of the London transport network which carries more than 7 million people every day to some place or the other. London buses have had a heritage of their own and this is why there are so many interesting facts on London buses which you may not have known earlier. Here are few of the selected facts, some contemporary, some historical and some weird which will inform you a lot on this world-famous system of transportation in London.

§ Why are London buses red in colour?

Before the year 1907, buses were coloured according to the route they covered. Because of a fierce competition among bus companies like LGOC or London General Omnibus Company (which was then the biggest operator of buses in the capital), started painting their buses red so that they could stand out in the crowd. As the Metropolitan Police encouraged them, they even started using numbers on the buses to tell of different routes.

§ Which year was the very first bus service started?

It was on 4^th July, 1829, Saturday that George Shillibeer started running the first omnibus service of the city, which ran from Paddington along the New Road and then off to Bank. The idea of mini bus hire was adopted from Paris where the service had already become extremely popular by then. Then, the omnibuses could carry only 22 people and they were pulled by 3 horses. There were 4 return journeys every single day!

§ The iconic Routemasters are still there in London

There is a bus called the Routemaster bus which is iconic in London but even though they were asked to withdraw their service on 2005, 9^th December. Soon after, they were replaced by low-floor buses. But the good news is that there are 2 routemasters which are still used today in few of the heritage routes. Route 9 from Kensington High Street to Aldwych is one of those heritage routes and Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill is the other heritage route.

§ A single-decker bus is the fastest bus

During a 2008 episode of Top Gear, the actor Richard Hammond went off to discover the bus that was best for London. What he did was raced a double-decker and bendy bus, single-decker through a race track. The result was that the single-decker bus won. This proved that the single-decker buses are the fastest.

§ For how long time does a bus driver get trained?

The drivers of buses should receive a driver certificate of Professional Competence or CPC. There are 3 tests that are included, a hazard perception and theory, a demonstration and case study and practical driving class.

So, if you’re a resident of Glasgow and you’re thinking of minibus hire Glasgow, make sure you first educate yourself on the interesting facts of London buses.

Review

Blogger Board Game Club: CODENAMES

Wednesday, August 02, 2017

As our first task on being a member of the Blogger Board Game Club with Playtime PR we were sent the fabulous game – Codenames to play. In exchange for an honest review of the games we receive an exclusively handpicked board game to review and play! Designed by Esdevium games it’s a like a subscription box for board games! Heaven!

In Codenames two teams of a minimum of two should make contact with all their agents first. The Spymasters (captains of the team) have a special “map” of their agents and they must give one word hints and clues about as many “agents names” on the board to their team mates. If the team mate guess the correct words then they can cover their agent. Just be careful though to avoid the assassin!

We played the game with some of our friends one evening so had two teams of three. They suggest making the teams of equal ability which was quite good fun but we did find that the younger players at 7 & 8 did struggle a little with the game.

We had a fair few games throughout the evenings which lasted even after the kids went off to bed! We all had a fabulous time and the games could last anywhere between 15minutes and in one case nearly an hour! It was a huge amount of fun and the joy when you get a word long before your friends on the other team get one is tremendous! We loved how quick moving it could be and how you could go from being 6 agents behind to suddenly sweeping the board and winning in two goes!

The game takes literally seconds to set up and as long as you have a team of four you’re good to go pretty much anyway! It’s been safely packed in our bag for taking camping this week!

We loved that codenames worked around the ability of the players we had on our teams! We’ve played with a huge range of ages now and each one ends up with tears of laughter and a superb evening!

We’d highly recommend the game for gatherings and especially over the summer holidays with everyone around! The more the merrier in this game! It RRPs at £16 but you currently grab a bargain on Amazon now at £13.89