Trains
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- Category: Blog Monday - DadTalk
Lee Sharp, founder of FamiliesRecommend, is back this week with more staycation ideas for you and your family.
Having travelled a whole 15 miles to Beamish on our last staycation day out, we decided that we really should travel a bit further afield. I was a bit sick of being the resident driver and fancied travelling without the stress of having to concentrate all of the time. This coincided with wanting to go far enough away from home to feel that we had “been somewhere,” but close enough to get back in time for supper.
We decided we should play to our strengths and go somewhere that would be a surefire winner for all of us. The adults in the party are pretty low maintenance, so anywhere would be good for us; it's the three-year-old who's the diva in our family dynamic. Thankfully, we know what makes him tick: trains.He loves them, from the big fast ones that travel hundreds of miles, to the “Metro” that goes in a big circle around Tyne and Wear. He does not discriminate. He loves them all equally. So, a train journey to…York. One hour away. Perfect. To see…trains. Genius.
Tickets bought and a train identified, we were off to York for the day to the National
Railway Museum. The first three minutes of the train journey to York saw Thomas sat in his seat watching Newcastle disappear into distance. Then he wanted to be up. Thomas had seen a woman going through the vestibule doors by pressing a button. He was so fascinated by this that he literally spent the remaining 57 minutes pressing the buttons between the carriages. Being a good Dad, I made sure he was safe in doing so whilst trying not to hinder any other passenger’s progress in getting to the buffet car. York could not arrive soon enough!
The National Railway Museum is just round the back of York Station and is free to enter. Of course I packed the trusty phrase book that came in so handy at Beamish: 'No, you can’t go there,' 'No, that’s not for you,' 'No, it's really heavy,' 'Don’t eat that,' 'You can’t do that there,' etc.
To be fair, I didn’t need it. Everything is more or less fair game for the kids. Big trains, from the Japanese Bullet to a replica of a Eurostar, are there to be climbed into. Dads like me, dragging their kids onto the trains telling them they'll love it are in abundance, along with Mams doing that eye rolling thing they do. It is hard not to regress back to childhood in this place.
After a couple of hours in the museum, a walk around York, and 60 minutes of further vestibule door opening it was back to Newcastle. We were all shattered, especially Thomas, who was in bed early that night having had a fab day out to see the trains. All that was left for us to do was get the take away in. Like I said, genius.
