UK Tourist & Leisure Attractions - Beaulieu

The Beaulieu National Motor Museum car park seemed half empty, perhaps everyone was staying away due to the foot and mouth situation.  The guy on the left is Bob and he's a great guy as he volunteered to drive that day.

The first port of call is, of course, the Beaulieu gift shop!  Why do women have such an affinity for such places?  Still, Belinda's picked up the Beaulieu guide book and that was useful for finding our way around the motor museum.

It took almost two hours to get to Beaulieu and the cafe there was very welcome!  Later, we enjoyed lunch there too and it was excellent - good food, good service, reasonable prices all in clean, comfortable surroundings.

One reason for visiting Beaulieu Motor Museum was to see the James Bond exhibition running there.  Belinda was shocked to see the BMW Z8 get sawn in half in 'Tomorrow Never Dies' and even more shocked to see it in real life!

At the James Bond picture wall there were lots of images from all the Bond movies, Belinda and Bob spent ages trying to match up the pictures with films!

By the time Belinda finished, the museum was starting to fill up, if only we'd looked round the cars first and done the Bond wall later.

At least air-conditioning isn't needed, it must have been much sunnier in the olden days!  Suppose power steering, anti-lock brakes and CD multi-changer are out of the question then!

This old garage looked very chaotic with tools, spares and bits of car all over the place.  The petrol pump must have taken ages to fill up judging by the pipe width, but a lot cheaper though no doubt!

Mike's jumping up in the air while trying one of the many interactive exhibits at the museum.  There were lots of exhibits of working models demonstrating things like how braking systems and steering work.

Here's the famous Bluebird in the land speed record section at Beaulieu.  This would get us up the motorway on our next holiday pretty fast, don't know where Belinda would put all her souvenirs though!

Here's Bob getting into the monorail which runs round the grounds and even through the inside of the museum at Beaulieu.  The ride did seem rather tame after the Disney rides in Florida the year before!

Belinda looking out of the tram at the well kept grounds of Beaulieu.  The roof was very low inside and we kept bumping our heads whenever we stood up to get more shots with the camcorder.

Well what a surprise!  Belinda's back in the gift shop as we leave Beaulieu National Motor Museum, buying up some James Bond memorabilia; she's a bit of a Bond fan you know!

The Beaulieu Motor Museum is a great day out for all, not just for old car buffs!  There's something for everyone to do with go-carts to race, the grounds to wander around and vintage bus rides.  Look out for other special events at Beaulieu too!  It was just a pity the day was so wet, but we didn't let it spoil our enjoyment of our visit and, after all, most of Beaulieu museum was inside.  Check out our UK tourist links page for the National Motor Museum website, it's well worth a visit.