Pirates & Princesses Day at Manor Walks

Manor Walks Shopping Centre and Concordia Leisure Centre in Cramlington, Northumberland team up every year to put on a fantastic Pirates & Princesses day on the green between the two centres. It is always a lovely day out for the kids and a lot of it is FREE family fun which gets the thumbs up from us. After catching an early morning viewing of Finding Dory at Vue and enjoying a quick al fresco coffee at F&B's, we headed over the join in the fun.

First up was face painting by Izzy's Face Painting. This was completely free of charge and Heidi was super chuffed to be transformed into a Pirate Cat.

Then we were itching to head over to the special beach area. Although we only live a couple of miles away from the coast, my kids can never resist burying their toes the sand. This was also FREE and there were plenty of buckets and spades available to use.

Fairground rides were £2 per child which I do find expensive but it seems to be the norm at these kind of events - I begrudgingly paid £6 for the kids to ride the teacups. YIKES! I didn't mind too much though as other activities were free so it kind of balanced out.

Then it was onto the shuggy boats, also £2 per child but this did seem like better value as H&J were on them for more than 10 minutes and had lots of fun.

There were a couple of concession stands. We headed to the Tall Ships area and were told all about parking for the event at the end of the month which was useful as we are planning on visiting.

We also headed over to the Northumberland Wildlife Trust where we took part in their tombola. No winners but we were given cute badges as a consolation prize. The Northumberland Wildlife Trust have lots of events planned over summer, you can find out more here. 

Manor Walks were asking people to donate empty pop bottles and build a boat together. I think it looks pretty impressive considering it's made of rubbish! Look out for the boat making an appearance at the Tall Ships on the Manor Walks stand.

A mini stage was at the centre of all the action and there was lots going on from Zumba classes to party dances and story telling.

Oh and we met the Nandos Cramlington (check out our review of Cramlington Nandos here) mascot. A bit surreal posing for pics with a giant chicken! They had lots of free samples and balloons to giveaway too.

Finally, and perhaps the star of the show, Pirate school and Pirate storytelling led by Captain Raggy Beard himself. The kids loved it.

We had a fantastic afternoon at Pirate & Princesses Day. Most of our day was completely free of charge. We spent £10 on fairground rides, £2 on sweets and £1 on tombola. All of this fun for only £13 seems like pretty good value to me.

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Disclosure: Collaborative Post.