Ad
We have had such a brilliantly fun time today in Blackburn following their brand new Brickosaurs trail! It was a really fun way to spend the day and I thought I’d share about our trip to this free trail that’s running in Blackburn from 20th August to 1st September.
We have all had such a challenging 2020 and early 2021 and all find ourselves desperate to make the most of the summer. You really don’t have to spend a fortune on big days out; trails like the Brickosaurs in Blackburn are a great way to spend the day as a family doing something fun and active. The summer holidays really are what you make of them and this was a perfect addition to our break this year.
What are the Brickosaurs?
The Brickosaurs are 15 AMAZING Lego dinosaur models dotted around the centre of Blackburn. The brilliant Brickosaurs include a 2m tall Velociraptor and a Parasaurolophus which is made from over 113600 bricks! There are also smaller ones which are still an impressive number of bricks!
It’s a superb interactive trail that sees you wandering the town centre to find them all. You’ll take in the traditional indoor market, the stunning Cathedral as well as some local shops. Each brickosaur has an information stand that tells you some interesting facts about the dinosaur and the brickosaur model as well as having a QR code. If you download the free Experience Blackburn app you can scan these QR codes to reveal a letter which, when all 15 have been revealed, spells a special dinosaur word and enters you into a competition to win £100 of vouchers.
Discovering Blackburn
Blackburn isn’t somewhere I am overly familiar with, so it was nice to visit somewhere new. We parked up on the Mall multi-storey car park and for the time we were there it cost me £2.70 to park, which I thought was more than reasonable. There looks to be a few different car parks around but this is one I have used in the past.
We exited the car park into the Mall, which is the main shopping centre for Blackburn and we were making our way to the information point to collect the map but soon found them dotted about the mall at other information stands.
The Mall itself is a great spot to do some retail therapy and, rather wonderfully, I didn’t spot any empty units (other than Debenhams) there! We all hear about the decline of the High Street but there seemed to be a good mix of national chains as well as smaller entities. There’s also plenty of places to grab a coffee and a snack.
The Brickosaur trail really is a superb way to get a feel for the town as you visit spaces you perhaps wouldn’t ordinarily go to. We loved walking through the Mall, the Indoor Market over to the Cathedral and out a little to Hobkirks (a sewing shop). It’s a great way to see the town and all it has to offer from quirky independent cafes (Mad Hatter’s Tea shop!) to little alleyways lit up with fairy light leading to the Cathedral Quarter. The Cathedral itself is beautiful and having a brickosaur in there really helps to invite people in.
Finding The Brickosaurs
There is a free app that you can download to help locate the Brickosaurs as well as a paper trail map which you collect inside the Mall. The trail map includes a series of questions to answer which, when you’ve returned the form to the Mall, is entered into a prize draw. Em really enjoyed doing this and was the chief quizzer for our trail.
The app allows you to scan QR codes to reveal a special word which you then screenshot and email to the team to be entered into a prize draw. D took charge with the QR scanning.
We loved finding the Brickosaurs and the route we used was the complete the Mall ones first, then head to the Indoor Market, then across to the Cathedral, Hobkirks, back to the centre to find the three at the Library, Greys and King George’s Hall before finding the last one at Morrisons.
We really had a lot of fun finding them, and it was also an excuse to look at clothes for me in Trespass (hello new walking boots!) and the indoor market was an absolute revelation. It’s a fabulous, bustling place and the children’s eyes were on stalks when they spotted the sweet stall; we couldn’t resist getting a bag each! Took me back to my own childhood of being granted 2ounces of sweets if I’d been well behaved during my mum’s own market trips in the summer holidays! We did struggle in the Indoor Market to find one of them – I think we were getting distracted by the wonderful stalls with fresh pies and other food stuffs, cards, clothes and crafting items!
The children really like the indoor market dinos as they were all archaeoceratops and smaller (but still an impressive number of bricks). I really liked the Parasaurolophus in the Cathedral.
Find out More
You can find out more about my day on the Brickosaur trail in Blackburn by heading to my story highlight here on Instagram or head to the Blackburn BID website for more information too. If you do head to the trail let me know with a comment below or on my Facebook page.
That sounds utterly superb and what a great advert for Blackburn – so much so that I’m off there next week having read this!
Looks fabulous, thanks for sharing.