Beaulieu Motor Museum

After a day exploring gardens we went for a change of pace with a trip to the Beaulieu Motor Museum. We booked tickets online the day before to knock a bit of the entry fee! My son and I had never been to the museum and my parents hadn't been for a few decades so it was a good place for a three generation visit. This post includes the YouTube video of our day.

We kicked off our day with a ride around on the Monorail. This was a great way to check out the layout of the grounds and also to learn some fascinating bits of information on the way round:

Then we headed to the Top Gear section of the museum. Not only did we see excerpts from the shows but could get up close to some of the vehicles they actually used:

Another fun way to avoid walking around the grounds was to catch the vintage bus. We had a couple of rides up on the open top deck:

The museum isn't just about vehicles. The original abbey still has some interesting places

There are also some lovely formal gardens to wander through:

We finally made it into the museum proper where there so many cars dating back to Victorian times:

Of course there were plenty of chances for my son to get interactive with the exhibits:

At the moment the museum is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So they had a special exhibit as well as a model of Genevive that drove around the site:

There were so many cars and motorbikes to look at. Some of them reminded me of cars that our family have owned in the past:

My son and I had a go on the special Beaulieu Racer Game created for Xbox. He also drove remote control cars:

There were shiny cars and fast cars:

There was also an exhibition of cars from movies and television. Which ones can you recognise:

We finished off by going back to find the parts of the garden we had missed which included an Alice in Wonderland model and a love lock tree:

As the playground was a bit quiet my son had a chance to try out the equipment. Think he is a little bit tall for it all:

Here is a video of some of things we got up to: