Visit to Falmouth Maritime museum

The bow of the Falmouth Maritime museum building juts impressively out over the harbour, water lapping against the walls beneath it. This award-winning museum is a star attraction and a recommended visit for us whilst in the area. We wandered in to be greeted by a large selection of boats including the boat that was sailed by gold medallist Ben Ainslie in the 2012 Olympics. Having been inspired by the real life boats, the girls then attempted to sail radio-controlled sail boats around a small course. Luckily their previous sailing experience came flooding back and was put to good practice.

We then drifted around the museum, soaking up the information, reading historical stories about the epic adventures of Shackleton on his voyage to the Antarctic and learning how to survive at sea through the terrifying tales of Tony Bullmore, whose yacht capsized in the 1996 Vendee Globe single-handed around the world race and the Robertson family who had to survive 38 days at sea after their yacht started to leak after being attacked by Orca. The girls enjoyed the problem solving tasks based on boat design and tested their understanding of buoyancy through a series of interactive activities. As we climbed up from the basement floor, where fish on the other side of the windows swam below the low tideline gazing in on us, we learnt navigational skills on a simple computer simulation and how to read the weather and the history of weather forecasting.

Later in the week, we actually ventured out on the sea and crossed over to the Scilly Isles, a venue that was on our list of must-see places back when we set off in September. Inspired by reading Michael Morpurgo books, we wanted a taste of island life and on an idyllic day we took the two and three quarter hour ferry there and back, spending a few hours exploring the white sandy beaches. There is an abundance of wildlife and plant life to see both on the island and during the boat trip.