ROAD TRIP!

Today we went on a road trip thanks to money supermarket and their £50 Road Trip Challenge. This blog is my entry into the competition.

So we packed up our new car for its first Big Drive. We decided to head down to Brighton. The children love it there and wanted to go into the Sea life centre. well the sea life centre have an offer on where teachers go free during August. So we decided perfect will combine the 2!


On the way there we followed satnav. It took us on England's biggest car park M25! So with all the stop starting the 70 miles to get to Brighton took over 2 hours. I didn't get any pictures as I was driving but it looked like this a lot of the way

 

We make it to Brighton, there are more picturesque views as we get to Brighton, some of the buildings there are beautiful

 

They don't show very clearly unless you click the picture to make it bigger but this one had mermaids on it.

 

We parked up so that we could explore on foot. As it had taken so long to drive along the m25 all the nearby spaces were full so we had to park in the town- £10!! for up to 6 hours. We decided as we were paying the £10 we would stay for 6 hours.

 

So we set off to eat our picnic on the seafront before going into the aquarium. I showed my evidence of being a teacher which the website says teachers get 2 free tickets so if any of my readers are teachers, you have until the end of the month. The lady at the till stamps all 3 of our hands and says enjoy your visit "don't I need to pay for one of the children as there are 3 of us?" I ask. She says no as she reads it that teachers go free and get 2 free tickets so that is all 3 of us for free. "thank you very much" is my response, I do not read the offer that way but am not silly enough to offer to pay for one of us again- it's £15 each to get in don't you know!

 

So we explore the aquarium looking at lots of different fish.

 

answer questions and learn interesting facts along the way.

Look at lots more fish.

 

Once we have finished we head along the pier.

 

I give the children £1 each to spend in the arcade. They were a disappointed as the ones here don't pay out any where near as much as the ones at Hastings so their £1 lasted only a few minutes. We headed to the end of the pier to the rides. The rides the children wanted to do were 4 tokens each, Stephanie needed an adult to ride with her, Dylan doesn't count as a suitable adult meaning all three of us needed to go on so 12 tokens per ride. the tokens cost £1 each. We decide that it is not worth it as we have a theme park trip planned for in a couple of weeks, we'll enjoy the bigger rides there thank you.

We head back to the beach for a paddle

 

The explore the town, well it is the home of the famous chocolate shop Choccywoccydoodah as show which my dad loves so we have watched it a LOT when we stay with him.

The displays are magnificent. They really do clever things with the chocolate. We head inside for a peak, but a small slab of chocolate costs £10! Out of our price range kiddos- any one for a Freddo?

That's our parking time up so we head back to the car.

Now it is a very hot day here in the UK, 30c the car registers. we are all determined we are not sitting on the m25 car park in rush hour to get home. So we decide to look at a map and work out our own map- Satnav can sleep this journey. We headed to the A26 and followed signs for Tonbridge until we found signs for home. We passed some stunning scenery, the only disappointing thing is that there was nowhere to stop so I could get some pictures. We sometimes forget that we don't need to go to far away places like Devon/Cornwall Wales to get scenery like this;

 

 

We have it right here on our doorsteps.

 

I think we will avoid the motorway more often it really was refreshing to follow where we thought we should go, rather than driving where Satnav tells us and take in the views. Once the children are up we are off out again, who knows maybe they are up for another road trip- off motorway today!