Our first residential home ed trip - part 4.

The final day of our first, but certainly not our last, residential home ed trip, started unsurprisingly with packing.  In addition to the tiredness, another reason I had been keen to have K & M back in with me, was to try to ensure that we had all our things in one place to make packing as easy as possible.  As it turned out I found a pair of M's socks, K's slippers and a wolf hat/scarf in friends' room, but I haven't found anything missing since we arrived home, so I think it was a good idea.

K, M & I had visited all but one of the museums that are open at this time of year, so before returning to Blists Hill, we paid a quick visit to Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron.  It was a bit too quick really, but we can always go back again with our annual passes.

We moved on to Blists Hill Victorian Town, where we met up with E, C, L & J at the candle dipping workshop and spent the rest of the day there with them and other friends for part of the time.

The candle dipping was very clever.  The children started with a plain white candle, with three containers of melted wax in front of them; red, blue and yellow.  Then under instruction they dipped the candles into the hot wax and the bucket of cold water next to them to produce rainbow candles, a couple of the boys chose to do green candles of varying shades.

K candle dipping.

And M's turn.

The end result.

 After candle dipping we visited lots of different shops, businesses and homes.  Including the chandler, where we saw how they would have made the candles from scratch.  The 'nodding donkey' was an ingenious machine, that allowed several dozen candles to be dipped at once, but was also a balance scale that 'nodded' when the candles were finished after 25-30 dips.

The chandler and his nodding donkey.

We went in the drapers, where I bought some hessian with the plan of doing some rag rugging and the lady in the wood turners, very kindly cut up and sharpened a wooden clothes peg for the purpose for a few of us.  Although the original plan had been to make a rug, a visit to the doctor's cottage changed that.

A rag rug wreath in progress.

And a finished one!

So now the plan is to make our own rag rug Christmas wreaths too.  K & M spent some of their money, which we had changed at the bank into Victorian money at the exchange rate of 10p to the farthing, in the Post Office.  They each bought themselves a quill pen for the price of 10d.

Upstairs we had a look at the little Post Office museum and were very impressed with this cycle.

We also had a look at the school, a couple of different cottages, as well as the plumbers and the blacksmith, as well as buying some rolls and flapjack from the baker for our lunch.

The blacksmith at work.

We took a trip into the clay mine on a little train and learned about the children who worked down the mine and the dangers for the workers such as blackdamp, which snuffed out lives as well as candles.

We left Blists Hill at about half past three for one last very quick visit to Enginuity, mainly so that I could spend money buying various Christmas presents in the gift shop, before heading home.

We all had a fantastic time and K & M have been asking about keeping in touch with various new friends as well as having enjoyed spending lots of time with old ones.  Thank you very much KL for organising it!