So we used up another of the days of holiday I had to use before the end of the year. Let's go to Mountfitchet Castle, that'll be a nice outing I thought. It was when we got there, and discovered the car park full, that we realised half term week was not a great time to go there. The place was heaving with children, both under parental control and under teacher control (there was a large school party there).

I remembered the toy museum on the hill - I'm a sucker for places like that. I didn't remember it had so much war memorabilia in it. And I certainly didn't remember the dinosaurs guarding the entrance with water cannon. You had to time your dash for the door to the toy museum carefully or you got soaked with water. Glad dinosaurs are now extinct.

We wandered around the reconstruction of a Norman wooden castle site. There is a lot of information there, it does give an impression of those times. Not good times for the villeins and serfs and poachers. The lords really lorded it over everyone else. The cafe was heaving so we had lunch somewhere else, ending up at our nearest Beefeater the Travellers Rest.

Norman wooden castle

Toy museum guarded by dinosaurs

Exhibit at Mountfitchet Castle