Peppa Pig World

The second half of our weekend away featured a trip to Peppa Pig World, at Paultons Theme Park in the New Forest. If you've not heard of Peppa Pig, the bossy but loveable porcine girl who stars in her own cartoon (like Thomas the Tank Engine it's shown on Channel 5 and Nick Jr, and therefore a big part of the reason why our CBeebies-watching days seem to be long behind us), then you've missed out on what can fairly be described as an all-encompassing media phenomenon.

I assumed that taking G to a whole park devoted to Peppa would be like hitting the motherlode for a three-year-old girl. And so it proved.

There are lots of rides. Here's G on a car:

There are also ample opportunities to eat sweet things. As it was a nice day, and both me and Mrs J wanted ice cream, G got one too:

This is on the helicopter-themed ferris wheel. G didn't mind the height, and actually seemed keen to go even higher:

One notable difference between Peppa Pig World and other theme parks is that, because it's aimed at the under 5s, the jaunty Peppa music is constantly being played. I'm not sure whether this is to soothe the excited children, or drown them out when they start crying. Perhaps it's both. As a result, since Sunday I've had the familiar tinkly sounds of the cartoon theme as an earworm. A small price to pay for giving G a fun day out though.

Talking of which, she was extremely well-behaved throughout, even when we wanted to leave. Although to avoid tears this did require a pre-emptive purchase of a dinosaur toy and a Peppa balloon:

Brilliantly, the balloon has a weight on the end so it not only fits around G's wrist, it also can't fly away should she let go. It's almost as if these theme park bosses have thought of everything.