Originally we had decided to go and do some shopping in the morning and hit Cadbury World in the afternoon but we changed it around so Will could get a good run around in the playground and have a sleep in the car at some stage. En route to Cadbury World we passed a pub called ‘The Spread Eagle’ which made us laugh.
Traffic was slow moving around the outskirts of Birmingham so it took us a little bit longer than we had anticipated getting there. Cadbury World is located in Bourneville (a suburb of Birmingham) which was established by Cadbury & Sons as a community for the workers of the factory. Because they were staunch Quakers, alcohol was forbidden which is a rule that is still in force in Bourneville even today.
Simon bought all our tickets and since we had a specific time to go through, we decided we would take a look around Bourneville. Lou and Will found a nice little playground over the road where Moosey got some more air time on one of the slides with the same reaction from Will as before. The rest of us walked along a nice little street where we bought some egg custard tarts for lunch (35 p each) to an old house called Selly Manor. A beautiful Tudor-style building dating back to the 14th century, it was due to be demolished before Cadbury bought them and had it relocated to Bourneville. It was literally taken down piece by piece and rebuilt over four years.
We arrived back at Cadbury World and went in for the tour. It had lots of corridors for Will to run along, like the Aztec Forest and the Cadbury Story, as well as a few kiddie friendly activities including Cadabra - a ride through a model chocolate wonderland. Simon and John had a car to themselves and looked unimpressed going through, but Will enjoyed it as I'm sure it reminded him of the Small World ride in Disneyland. There were plenty of informative sections detailing the history of Cadbury and the chocolate making process, and we each came away with a decent bag of goodies.
After Cadbury World, we drove into Birmingham to the Bullring – a famous market place since The Middle Ages that has been developed into a shopping centre several times with over 26 football pitches worth of shops, boutiques and restaurants. We walked around for a while looking at a few of the sales before we stumbled (accidentally?) into a Krispy Kreme donut shop. Needless to say, we stopped there for a while before moving on. After a good couple hour and a half, we met up with Pamela, John and Simon and headed back to Penkridge. I offered to cook a couple of curries for dinner which were graciously accepted by all. We stayed up a bit and chatted before going to bed.
