A couple of weeks back on a rainy summer holiday sunday hubby and I took the boys to RAF Hendon a great day out for the family! It’s just down the A1 for us in North London, so a quick 40 min drive. And its mostly all indoors, so a perfect location for a day out when its raining, lets face it there been a few rainy days this summer holidays!
I think this blog is best described in pictorial form so I’ll describe the day in the pictures I took.
Parking
Parking is really near the entrance and you do have to pay for this, £5 for the day of £3 for 3-4 hours. We went for the whole day. At the entrance you can just walk in for FREE, or you can buy tickets to the flight simulater and the 4D cinema. We bought both as did think getting into a museum like this for free is pretty incredible. And we bought a guide book (£3). Tickets to simulator and cinema were £9 each for family tickets, the only person that couldn’t go in was Jack the 2 year old due to extreme movement and noise (??!!) You enter into the first airplane hanger…
In awe…
From this point onwards all we hear from Jack is wow, look, wow, look, airplane, wow..you get the conversation…
This hanger had a really interesting timeline wall from the first ever flight to 2012. Plotting all the events in history, Dylan and I had a good look and discussed some historical things. The boys particularly enjoyed seeing the bits about the world wars.
The flight simulator was in the first hangar, so we queued and had a go. Was pretty good and it made me feel sick. So I can sort of say I’ve flown in a RAF jumpjet 😉
Onto the next hangar for bombs and aircrafts that release bombs 🙂 This was a favourite of the boys… below a picture of a big bomb. The airplane in the first picture though is an actual bomber from world war 2 that was shot down and salvaged from the sea. Amazing history, incredible to think this plane had maybe 10-15 people inside who all perished when the plane was shot down.
Next was the hugest plane ever, over their heads, whilst they ran around, here having a fight. And in the background behind Dylans head. It was a stealth bomber (I think!) and you walk right underneath it to see where the bombs would go.
Time for coffee…
We then went into a 3rd hangar for helicoptors and a coffee shop. Nice coffee and hot chocolate I can report, we sat and illegally ate the picnic we had brought with us ;-). There was a sea king rescue helicopter. My dad used to work for the MOD as a dog handler where he helped secure the RAF base in Culdrose Cornwall. When I used to visit I was allowed to climb into these helicopters and have a good look around 🙂
We went to the 4D cinema, again it made me feel sick, I must be getting old oh and I got wet as hubby told me best place to sit was front row in the middle! Dylan loved it and the staff let him go in twice.
Next was the interactive bit with loads of experiments and active things for the boys to do. Here is a small selection of fun stuff.
So all in all a very fun day, it could have just ended with a trip to the shop, but the boys decided to go mental and create havoc so we just went home 🙂
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