| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Coordinator: | |
| When: | As arranged and notified |
Outings are listed on the Events page.
Please contact Gaynor for more information (and include your u3a membership number).
Here's a few of our recent outings:
- 3 hour cruise on the River Lea from Ware with fish & chips
- Coach trip to Eastbourne
- Coach trip to Chartwell House
- Coach trip to Margate
- Coach trip to the National Space Centre.
Group Leader: Gaynor Green
OUTING TO THE MUSEUM OF BRANDS
The group made their way to Ladbroke Grove station, then a short walk to the Museum of Brands. We started with a talk about the Museum's collection. In 1963 a 16-year boy Robert Opie saved a Munchies wrapper which started his passion for collecting packaging of all types. Now in his late seventies he has a collection of 200,000 items, of which 17,000 are on display in the museum.
You walk through the meandering "Tunnel" with glass cabinets from floor to ceiling on both sides. They are filled with every type of packaging: tins, tubes, boxes from every brand you can think of and more, plus papers, magazines, toys and games: many things from the Victorian era to the seventies.
There was a large display of televisions and radios. It was absolutely amazing. All we kept hearing was "my parents had one of those" or "I had one of those". There was even a chemist from the 1950s, also things from jubilees, coronations and both World Wars. It really was a walk down memory lane.
There was a nice cafe where we all had lunch and a memorable garden to honour the Lighthouse Aids Centre that was previously on this site, famously visited by Lady Diana to meet the sufferers.
Prior to the Museum of Brands and the Lighthouse Aids Centre, there was an infant school on this site; I attended that school from 1949 to 1955.