Enid Blyton IV - The Eileen Soper bit

This weekend we finally visited the last place on our Enid Blyton trail - 'Eileen Soper's Illustrated Worlds' in Poole. A sweet little museum dedicated to the illustrator of many of Enid Blyton's books. The museum has it's own mystery in the secret passage with a torch pen to hunt for clues. The little jammers loved it, particularly becasue of the darkness - very important in a mystery.

Once you've solved the mystery and emerge into daylight there are plenty of old fashioned scenes to play in. the jammers favourite had to be the caravan. emily Button made a friend and little Jam poured copious cups of tea inside

and out in the pretend camp. This is the kind of play my girls love and they would have been content for hours had we not dragged them off to see the rest.

Virtually all of it is hands on so they played the piano, typed on the typewriter, played shops (love those Avery scales) and explored the vintage toys and games.

I popped into the 'cinema' and watched a little film about Eileen Soper. I remember her illustrations from books I read as a child but didn't know anything about her and her amazing wildlife garden until now. She sounds like she was a fantastically eccentric woman!

 

In amongst it we remembered we were hunting for the final clue and found it hidden away. I love the fact that the trail has not been easy peasy and I struggled to spot one clue (I wont tell you which one)!

So clues all found we had a grid reference and luckily there was a map in the museum. Eldest Jammer told us where we needed to go to find the hidden postbox.

 Off we drove until...

 We finished the final stage on foot!

The baddies had been well and truly caught

and we posted our entries with a little help from our friend.

Now all we need to do is keep our fingers crossed.

I'll be back with some Emily Button news later in the week.

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