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Mrs Pondo bought us a random tour of the Spaceguard Centre? Never heard of it? Me neither! Sounds a bit nuts, it's a tiny two-person outfit on the Welsh border that looks for asteroids that may be a threat to earth - fair enough, I thought, happy to give anything a go once!
Well, it was fantastic. It's a private observatory that runs on goodwill and charitable donations right in the middle of nowhere, running a handful of 90 minute tours four days a week. It looks like a private observatory too, a little worn around the edges, but my goodness, what a fantastic hour and a half. The talk was delivered by the director Jay Tate, first question was "are you astronomers?" and our negative answer prompted just THE perfectly pitched lecture, quite high-brow from our point of view but utterly fascinating - how planets are formed from the detritus of baby stars, the relative sizes of planets in our solar system (gas giants are bloody massive!), why there's a gap between Mars and Jupiter, what that means for us, some historic asteroid hits, how we can spot inbounds and what we could do about it and much, much more besides. My job is training and presentation, and I have never - never - seen a smoother lectute, not an "umm" or an "arr", every bit of kit at the many locations we stopped at worked exactly as intended and I would wager it ran 90 minutes to the minute. It might be a bit of a challenge for kids, but if you've a casual (or even deep!) interest in astronomy, it could be the best eight quid you'll spend. 🙂
Oh - Tripadvisor is worth a look, the overwhelming majority of reviews are corking but there have clearly been the occassional clash of personalities or unrealistic expectations. 🙂
Funnily enough I drove past the sign on the way into Knighton yesterday on the way to see my parents 5 minutes further down the road. It seemed a bizzare sign and wondered what the hell of was. Now I know, cheers!
Seconded. We took my father there some years ago, as he was keen to get a good look at the rings of Saturn. The owner set up a small telescope outside on the grass, then gave us the tour and the talk. It was mesmerising.