The World of Beatrix Potter
The World of Beatrix Potter
Date of visit 17/09/2024
Attraction - what3words ///powerful.strike.trinkets
Nearest car park - what3words ///trendy.huddling.whirlwind
Having finished our visit to Rydal Caves and after a quick visit to Ambleside, we decided to drop in on The World of Beatrix Potter attraction in Bowness-on-Windermere. My wife had spotted this place when we were looking for things to do during our stay in Cumbria and thought it would make a change from the more strenuous walking we had been doing.
Once you step through it's not long before you start to spot and name the various characters from the stories, including Peter Rabbit, Mr. Tod the Fox and Jemima Puddle-Duck amongst others.
The characters on display are beautifully designed and made, largely by the costumier and prop designer Elaine Garrard and stage designer Roger Glossop, who was the original owner of the exhibition and was responsible for its opening, over 30 years ago!
The settings for the characters have been update over the last few years, with amazing attention to detail in every corner of the exhibition.
The World of Beatrix Potter has been voted in the Top 10 best family museums in Europe and does have a certain endearing appeal to it.
Beatrix Potter
There is something quaint about these sort of attractions, okay, it's not a quirky as the relatively nearby Pencil Museum at Keswick, but it does have a certain Britishness about it!
We parked in the Rayrigg Road car park, a short walk away from our visit. The parking here is charged for blue badge holders, with an additional hour "free" on top of your paid for time. It's only a relatively short walk of a couple of minutes to the attraction itself, although it should be noted that approaching from this direction does leave you with a short, sharp uphill walk to the entrance.
The visit starts with a short video, cast onto the wall of the small film room where you begin your journey. The video introduces you to some of the characters and Beatrix Potter herself, before the doors open for you to pass though to see the characters in their natural settings!
From our point of view, taking a child round with our Little One's challenges was quite interesting. For one thing, he can be quite noisy, which doesn't always lend itself to a museum environment, although on this occasion his verbalising wasn't an issue to anyone on site, and almost added to things, with his childlike enthusiasm. He also likes to touch, which again doesn't always fit in, but here it seemed appropriate, although we did make sure it was only ever light touches and no grabbing!
There is also a nice outdoor section, which is thrown over to the Peter Rabbit show garden. This is a lovely, compact area, with some nice flowering plants. The garden has been designed to tell the "story" of Beatrix Potter and captures many of the features associated with her stories, like the cos lettuce Benjamin Bunny nibbled on and the gooseberry bushes where Peter Rabbit got caught in a net. The details, for adults are all there, while for children it is another place to explore.
Our Little One was particularly drawn to the water feature in this area, as he does love a bit of running water!
The exhibition, as to be expected, is finished off with a pretty decent, if unfortunately like most, slightly expensive shop. There is a great range of Potter themed memorabilia here, with apparently the largest range of Beatrix Potter collectables in the UK, as it should be!
The access statement on the website gives full details of their thinking around assisting those with mobility challenges.
All in all we found this a charming place to visit. There are quiz trails to follow around the museum, if you elect to take part, although this doesn't work for us, as Little One can't join in, and doesn't really like to be in one spot for too long! As mentioned at the start, this is a nice, quirky place to visit, that gets you away from the more strenuous activities that the Lakes have to offer.