So we went to Dorchester, and walked around for a little
before we went into Dorset County Museum.
The building itself reminded me of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford,
with the second floor having a gallery overlooking the main room as we walked
in. It was quite a good little museum
with things relating to Dorset's history, Dorchester's history, and some archaeology
and geology, including a couple of dinosaur skeletons and some fossils. We spent a good couple of hours in there, and
I would definitely recommend visiting it if you're ever in Dorchester. There are some really nice pieces of mosaic,
or Roman pavement, and some really nice pieces on display, such as a jadeite
axe, nice pieces of jewellery and pottery.
We came out of Dorset County Museum and decided to visit the
Tutankhamun Exhibition, which I have to say....we wouldn't recommend...!! When we walked in, we walked into the shop,
and paid our entrance fee at the till (which I personally thought was rather
steep at £8.99, considering what was on display). We went into a long narrow room which, for a
Museum, had far too many words on the displays, and basically the majority of
items on display were actually replicas of the real artefacts. There were many photos of artefacts too, but
there were far too many words for people to read – so many in fact, I don't
think the person who “curates” this place really has much of an idea about
being a visitor in a Museum!
At the end of the initial corridor was a (replica) mummy,
and then around the corner were the two best parts of the exhibition –
basically a reconstruction of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb – the first
part being Howard Carter looking through a hole in the wall, and behind it, a
room full of “wonderful things” as he had put it when he laid his eyes on
it. Moving through into the second room
was a reconstruction of the removal of the sarcophagus, which was just as fun
to see. These reconstructions are the
best part of the “Museum” so I guess it's worth visiting for that alone. After this part, there were a few more words
(although not quite so many) and some large (replica) items in cases, mostly
items from the tomb itself. I have to
say that there is a very nice golden dagger in there which was a very good
replica indeed.
We then went through the shop and up some stairs into the
“Mummy Exhibition”, where there were about 5 (replica) mummies on display, and
with the exception of one, they were quite good replicas, and again, more words
for the visitor to read. Back
downstairs, we had a brief look in the shop before coming out with relief.
Feeling peckish, we had a walk around to find somewhere to
eat. Now this is one thing we cannot
fault Dorchester for – there are PLENTY of places to eat, there was so much
choice! We eventually settled upon a
nice little place called “Potter's Cafe” in which I had vegetable soup and
Mathew had a jacket potato with sausage and onions. I also had raspberry lemonade, which I highly
recommend! We also discovered this
little cafe is on Trip Advisor. I don't
know what the reviews on there are, but we thought it was an excellent place
for a bite to eat!
Leaving the cafe, we walked around in the hope of possibly
getting a few presents for Christmas, but to be honest, there wasn't that much
in the way of quirkiness, which is the type of shop I like to buy from at
Christmas time. We went into one shop
where I could have had one of everything myself, but didn't see much for anyone
else I know, really! Dorchester seems to
have an abundance of “Cook Shops”, at least 3 or 4 shops which are a little
like Lakeland, selling crockery and kitchen items. There are also 2 toy shops here as well,
among the usual clothes shops like M&S of course.
We walked around a little more and decided that we had been
pretty much everywhere we could go. We
made our way back to the car, where we drove along to visit the Cerne Abbas
Giant before going back to the cottage for a nice cup of tea!
No comments:
Post a Comment