We continued yesterday's theme of visiting somewhere new, this time we drove west to the Black Country Living Museum. This is similar to Blists Hill at Ironbridge with a similar range of displays and shops.

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We decided to visit a few new places today and chose to head out east along the A14 towards Northamptonshire. We looked at the map in the English Heritage handbook and the Rushton Triangular Lodge looked interesting. The hunting lodge was quite small and only took a couple of minutes to look around.

Emma wanted to stop somewhere for an ice cream so we got our phones out and looked up locations of country parks. Emma found the East Carlton Country Park, so we headed there next. We walked along a marked path with sculptures scattered along its length. On the way home we drove past the Naseby battlefield and stopped at a viewpoint and the monument.

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I don't like heights and the last time I went to Go Ape I spent a lot of time trying not to look down. This time I wasn't too bad. I still don't like heights but I started to get used to being several metres in the air.

This time we went to the Go Ape in Cannock Chase. The course was similar to the one at Nottingham Forest but with some different crossings.

I took the above photo from one of the crossings between trees.

Some photos from this year's Festival of History.

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Some photos from our day out to the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.

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A few photos from Warwick Castle, mainly falconry and some peacocks.

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Mainly photos of a man falling off a camel.

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Photos from the Festival of History - demonstrating use of gas masks in the first world war.

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I have posted some Festival of History photos, splitting them up by category. Some of the areas, such as the WW1 trench and the medieval village were missing but there were more events going on and the place seemed much busier than last year.

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The Asparagus Festival was held at the Fleece Inn, near Evesham. We watched a cookery demonstration where a three course meal was prepared, with each course containing asparagus. The surprise was the dessert, which was an Eton Mess, containing asparagus ice cream and garnished with an asparagus tip. We tried some of the ice cream and it was unusual but not awful.

There was a craft tent in the pub garden. In addition to displays of traditional crafts, there were various things for sale, including cakes. The cupcake below was a standard chocolate cake (very tasty) with chocolate icing and asparagus shaped (but not flavoured) decorations.

We took advantage of our English Heritage membership to pay a quick visit to Kenilworth Castle. It was too hot to spend too long wandering around so we'll have to re-visit later in the year, on a cooler day.

We also had a quick walk around Kenilworth itself, and passed the new Waitrose, which were were told opens on thursday.