I’m taking my family to the Isle of Wight next weekend. Again. And I’m sensing a certain reluctance, bordering on revolution. Maybe, next time, we can do something different and I can get some inspiration from Weekend Escapes with Warwick Davis (ITV).
Warwick is taking his family to … The Midlands! What? Isn’t that somewhere you go on holiday from, not to? Not at all, as it happens. At an outdoor adventure centre, Warwick and his daughter climb a tall pole with a platform at the top, a bit like a bird table, as Warwick says. They make a Jacobean stew in a 17th-century manor house and visit the vacuum cleaner museum at Heanor (more for Warwick than the rest of his family to be honest, he’s an enthusiast). They also live history at the Black Country Living Museum, which looks brilliant – it’s a lot more entertaining for kids than your average (dead) museum is.
It all looks pretty good, and Warwick and his family are excellent guides. Next year, I’m taking my family to the Midlands.
It’s also entertaining – in a slightly cringey way – watching the effort people go to not to mention, or refer to, or even notice, that Warwick and his family have dwarfism. Certainly not to do jokes about it. So Warwick has to do his own. “I thought there was a height restriction in the army. Obviously not,” he says after he and his son fail to avoid conscription (first world war) at the living museum.
“Prepare for the weight of two,” says the mountain rescue guide during a rock climbing rescue practice in which Warwick is playing the rescuee. “To be honest, it’s not the weight of two,” says Warwick. “It’s more like one and a half.” The rescue man laughs, nervously.
Others he entraps, leading them into trouble. “How high would you say I was now?” he asks Vicky, the adventure guide belaying him up a pole. “About five foot six,” she says, without thinking. No one fails any tests though, thankfully.
Incidentally, they don’t go to Warwick itself, or even Warwickshire. A trick missed I’d say. We will be visiting the Stourbridge suburb of Wollaston. Birthplace of the steam locomotive, it says here.
