Saturday 30 June - Monday 2 July Little Ballinger

Three nights with Uncle John and Aunty Jo in their beautiful, peaceful house ‘Little Ballinger’. Once again, John & Jo provide a wonderful welcome that immediately made us feel at home. We had a nice relaxing Saturday evening, and then Romy, Kia, Jessa and I were up and away early on Sunday morning to visit the one thing that Romy had put in a special request for on this trip - a visit to Warner Bros studio tour at Leavesden. This is a recently opened attraction, that has only been going for a couple of months, and which is hugely popular. Warner Bros have constructed a huge facility to house hundreds upon thousands of the props, costumes, sets, green scenes, masks, animatronics etc etc etc that were used to make the Harry Potter series of movies. It was all encompassing, and absolutely fascinating. It was great to get an insight into the massive amounts of time and effort that were bought to bear to bring this fantasy world to life, and give a feeling of realism to it sll. It was especially interesting coming hard on the heels of our visit to Oxford, making comparisons between the worlds of Oxford and Hogwarts inevitable. We ended up spending around five hours there, and only just got back in time to see James and Linda and co, who turned up for tea and a game of croquet. Meanwhile, Jeremy, Danae, John & Jo had been to visit Miss Tiggywinkle’s home for injured or ill wildlife, where they saw, amongst other things, several hedgehogs (of course), and a ‘truncated’ fox, born with abnormally short legs.

Monday saw us head into London for the first time, for a ‘kids day out’, to make up for missing the theme park visit that was to be a part of our cancelled Paris trip. This day involved a visit to M&M’s world in Leicester Square (who would have thought that you could construct a five storied shop, entirely dedicated to a type of lolly). We only managed two floors before the bright lights, rampant commercialism and relentless perkiness drove us out. Covent Garden was an interesting mix of shops, markets and street performers, but again the ‘tourist trap’ aspect of it was a bit overwhelming, and the street performers were sadly nowhere near the standard of those we have seen in Barcelona in particular. Finally, and best of all, we stopped in at Hamleys, a massive toy shop right in the middle of Rgeent Street. The best thing about Hamleys is the toy demonstrations, which are little mini-shows in their own right. We spent a lot more here than we intended!!

Ready for the tour! We were on the first tour of the day, and arrived early -
I don't think you would ever see this place so deserted otherwise.

Gryffindor dormitory

Item on table of make-up artist

The Burrow

Casting Floo powder

The Monster bok of Monsters

All aboard the Night Bus

Outside Ollivanders

Snape in the Potions clsssroom

Playing croquet

In the garden at Little Ballinger

Regent St

M&Ms World

Lego Queen at Hamleys