A Midlands break

Last week we took advantage of the half term to have a well deserved family break.

We stayed in a cheap but comfortable Premier Inn in Hockley Heath, just outside Birmingham.  The first day we visited Cadbury World.........yummy!  We have been there once before long before the children were born but it has really changed.  A lot more to it now, plus quite a few free samples too.  We all really enjoyed it.  However it was only a 3.5 hour visit(luckily we used Tesco vouchers rather than paying the £50 to get in), so in the afternoon we went to Stratford upon Avon.  This was a really pretty place and we also visited a wizarding museum/shop which my Harry Potter fans really enjoyed. The only negative I would say was that I was a bit disappointed with the individual "pretty" shops that were there - or not there, should I say.  The next day we went to Warwick but we couldn't find any nice shops there at all.  Having visited 2 or 3 other castles this year, we didn't want to go to the castle, so moved on to Leamington Spa.  Hooray - we hit jackpot!  It was a nice place to walk around, plus had a Cargo shop and Store 21 (with nice house bits) as well as some good individual shops to browse.  We only had one day that rained from start to finish, the rest were quite mild and sunny.  All in all, it was a nice relaxing break.