Slough Day 7 - M25 Car Park Beds and Bucks

We packed up and left.  We hopped onto M25, and we met the infamous M25 Car Park.  There was supposedly a vehicle fire, and the 30 minute drives to Luton turned into a 1.5 hours drive.

We stopped at Stockwell Park for a lunch and a walk around.  Some of their collections were closed to public, but there were still plenty to see and walk around.

Then we drove to Bradwell Windmill for a harvest festival.  It was a restored windmill, but mostly cosmetic.  We fueled up, stopped at another Waitrose for the toilets, but their coffee machine was down, much to our distress.

Dairy milk powered our last leg of the journey.

Slough Day 6 - Battersea

My friends told us about CelebrAsia, after some research, we decided to have a day out at Battersea, combining it with Go Ape Battersea.  We also got some cheap train tickets, which also helps.

We had the Windsor farm shop sausages for breakfast, they are okay.  Then we brought our pack lunch to the station, and ate them on the train.  We walked around the park, before going onto Go Ape.  There were no chipped zipwire landing, so we stayed quite clean.  The course was longer than expected, it took us full two hours and we were quite tired by the end.

We went to the Power Station, had a look at their little museum.  It is big!

We started walking around and started grazing.  Most of the food was much Anglicized, how could a gado gado has no heat, negligible shrimp paste, no rice cake, no tempeh, no prawn crackers, but I won't complain about the satays. 

Meanwhile, my friend was stuck in traffic, after refusing to take the tube.  They arrived just before 8pm, and we had a quick hi and byes before we had to start walking back to the station.

Slough Day 5 - Windsor

We could do with a calm day, so we went to have an easy day out in the Windsor town.  We parked up and walked in.  We saw the changing of the guards.

We had a look around some library, parks, supermarket, charity shops, just about the normal things we do.  We even crossed the river into Eton.  We went back to the car on the Long Walk, which felt like forever, and drove home via the farm shop.

Slough Day 4 - Thorpe Park

We were excited about going back to Thorpe Park, and we had all the strategy worked out.

It was also quite quiet like Legoland, but very few small children in sight.  We went straight onto the first open ride like last time, this time was Colossus, which is good, set the bar low.  It was as clunky as we remembered it.  Then we walked onto The Saw, also with minimal queuing, it was so much smoother!  Followed by Nemesis Inferno, which was smoother than I remembered.

We put in a few small rides, and onto the water ride, before the bottom of the boat is flooded.  The 4d cinema was showing the same movie, so there were no surprise there, neither of us remembered one of the tactile element, maybe it wasn't working last time.  

The queue was a little shorter, some 35 minutes, for Hyperia just before lunch, so we went for it, it was one engineering marvel!  I would go on again if it wasn't for the queuing.

We went to lunch and came back in.  We went the ghost train, I don't know why we want to go to spend time in a dodgy train and dodgy train station, who knows.  We were getting tired and the roller coasters are getting less fun.  We went back onto the water ride, and as expected, the bottom of the boat was flooded.

I went onto bumper cars and Tidal Waves, 4 times, on my own.  I was very soaked at the end!

I did get a quick change before headed back to the car for further change.  We nipped to a Lidl, not knowing the car park was not free, that's London for ya.  We went straight in and straight out, I think we were lucky that they actually have unpublished grace period, phew.

Slough Day 3 - Legoland Windsor

The forecast kept changing, and when it came to it, it was a rainy day in Legoland.  We tried to keep dry by going into the indoor rides first, but they weren't open!  Our first ride was their pirate ship, it was not a children's pirate ship!

Because of the rain, the park was extra quiet, so on most rides, we were able to stay on first a second ride.

We were quite wet by the time we went to the water ride, thinking we couldn't get wetter, and we were wrong.  The water ride had a lot of water sprays!  Even the Legoland Express train side and the boat rides, they all have the added excitement of water sprays! 

The submarine rides were quite nice.  We managed to get onto 30 "rides".  In the late afternoon, the sun came out, and we managed to dry off before getting back into the car, except for my shoes, we had to change before I could start driving.

Slough Day 2 - Chessington World of Adventure

As children are back in school, some off the theme parks are closed some days mid-week.  It helped us to decide which order to go to these theme parks.  Chessington World of Adventure was first up, it was furthest away from our base and also shortest opening hours.  When we got there, they also closed the main car park, so everyone was doing a strange u-turns and started queuing on the road.

We had some advise from a friend, that the theme park draws more younger children, so those areas are the busiest and the bigger rides are quieter.  We also revised the videos in preparation.

We managed to hop on 21 "rides".  It was a dry day, so we decided to go the water rides earlier in the day.  Although we had just been to the zoo, it was nice to see a few more animals.  It was a nice day out.

We were tired, but we had to get the dinners for the rest of the week.  I stuck to the game plan, got us two Tesco Finest meals.  When we got home, we made some fish and chips.  

Slough Day 1 - London Merlin Adventure

This holiday is a similar holiday to our Surrey holiday two years ago, except this year we are Merlin, not RHS.

We took the train into London, it was nearly an hour on the train.  We first went to the London Aquarium, it was quite big and quite nice.  They also had the Gentoo Penguins.

Then we had some authentic okonomiyaki.  We had time spare before London Eye, so we squeezed in the London Dungeons.  There were elements that is similar to the York Dungeons, and at the end, there was a drop ride!

We went onto London Eye, it was so nice that it has air conditioning!  We were able to point at a few things, it would have been nicer if there were fewer people.  

We had some Matcha ice-cream before heading home.  I have also learnt to boil eyes with microwaves, so we don't have to bring all the eggs back to the North!