Cambridge University - Twilight Tour at Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

Kadii Hamilton with a Deinotherium Giganteum at Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University for a Night at the Museum!

A true Night at the Museum experience! When an impending birthday fast approaches but they do not want any presents and memories and experience means more; attention is currency and exploring is the prize, you find yourself in a cycle of seeing what intriguing activities are going on and start planning rigorously how to fit it all in.

This was one of those! Half term was fast approaching and it was Cataleya's birthday too. The big 9! The final single digit year age in our little family before extinction! Okay, maybe not that dramatic....

But we had to do something special. Cataleya's interests are broad and vast. Her first love; space. Her second love; dinosaurs. I'm sure we come somewhere close after...

SO we covered space with the gifts and decided to see where our next adventure would be that perhaps involved dinosaurs.

A bit of googling later, we came across Twilight Tours at Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Sounded quite mature initially, but when does that stop us?

We arrived nice and early and scoured the streets for parking. Regent Street ended up being our chosen spot as we followed our noses to make sure we had snacks lined up for after the event.

Maven and Cataleya Hamilton exploring a Night at the Museum at Cambridge University

Walking through Downing College and stopping at the map, we noticed how vast this one particular campus actually was! We needed directions from the kind gentleman who seemed to be walking out direction, and he pointed out a building which towered all of the other buildings, and we took a right and then a left and a right again and there it was; in front of us, two stair cases leading towards a dark entrance where we could just about make up some pink LED glow. That must be the place!

After presenting our tickets, we were granted access to roam the land of dinosaurs, glow in the dark crystals and explore a treasure chest of Darwin's collection; mammoth tooths and mini periwinkles (which has always been a fascination ever since an author once described a character's shoes as the shape of periwinkles!).

Experiential learning and getting stuck in with this fossils and artefacts at Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University

An informative volunteer was on hand to answer any questions, and when we hit an obstacle as the questions desired depth, the trusted phone came out for assistance! We continued and were shown the world of crystals under a 1200x telescope and viewed under differenet lights, with the joys of being explained to what those actually represented. We learned about the formation of these minerals and had a short brief guide to how to decipher the mysteries of minerals; or how we would like to put it; Mother Nature's Meaningful Art. Each microscopid slide told it's own story of history and time, each colour represented another mineral from the periodic table and the variation in gradient told of it's own journey.

Standing amongst the fossils of historical extinct creatures in the dark, lit up by LEDs brought a sense of history meets modern. The shadows of the corpses (as Kadii puts it..) created a surreal experience, making it feel as though we were walking amongst these magnificent, gigantic beasts and we couldn't help but wonder what their personalities would have been like, had we roamed the Earth at the same time. We decided which pets we would have had and how we were going to tame them; although we concluded that with all of our imagination, it would've probably been a wiser idea to keep them as wild pets and enjoy them from a distance!

Kadii Hamilton with skeletons and bones from a dinosaur, illuminated by a green LED light show, making it feel like we were amongst them!

Nonetheless, the time came when we were told the doors would soon be closing so we ran around taking our final photos before finding our way back to the car (sat nav free and using simple socialising skills!).

It was a wonderful evening and a worthwhile drive from Birmingham; and overall a Birthday celebration to remember!