The Pencil Museum

If you're ever in the Lake District and happen to want to fill a couple of hours with children you might like to visit the Derwent Pencil Museum. It isn't very big, but if you have children of a certain age who love a clipboard and a challenge there is quite a bit to learn in that small museum.

You will also find an art room and a cafe, both of which have paper and paintbrushes and a range of Derwent's (excellent) products for you to dabble with, which if you haven't tried before are second to none.

Derwent are renowned the world over for their quality, their palette and their usability, ranging from pastels, to pencils, watercolour pencils and the new, and rather fabulous, Inktense range. Honestly, it's enough to make you want to take to the hills and lakeside to paint masterpieces in watercolour.

You will also find a well-stocked shop (of course) and very often a range of 'seconds' for knock-down prices to make those artist's pennies go a little bit further. And if you plan your journey in advance you might even want to turn up when they have a real artist running a workshop!

The few bits and bobs we picked up has fuelled and inspired and renewed an interest in all things artistic here. I've always stood by the belief that good quality tools produce and encourage better results, and with these items added to our collection I can only hope that we'll all be producing some great work very soon.