It’s hot as hell at the moment, so it seemed as appropriate a time as any to visit that parental realm of eternal pain and suffering also known as CBeebies Land.

(Only kidding, I’m not sure how I’d have survived the last three years without those snatched minutes of peace courtesy of Mr Tumble and company!)

I’m going to preface the following with the undeniable fact that she absolutely loved it, and asked if we could come again tomorrow (hell to the no my lovely ).

Anyhoo, here are our key takeaways if you too are a glutton for punishment looking to drop a small fortune on branded tat, warm sandwiches and, of course, creating magical family memories etc. etc…

– Upon exiting the car park, if your partner says ‘THE MONORAIL? But it’s a LOVELY day! And we’ll be waiting for AGES! It’s ONLY a short walk!’ you are completely within your rights to continuously berate him (quietly, because there may be kids present who aren’t as familiar with terms like ‘twunt’ and ‘cock womble’ as your own family) for the entire 5-mile hike. Whilst pushing a ridiculously heavy buggy. In 27 degree heat. Totally over it now BTW…

– When you cross the threshold, small child fizzing with excitement and anticipation, and ask them who they’d like to see first, and they say ‘PAW PATROL!!! – NO, BLAZE!!!’ this is a strong indicator that you’ve completely mismanaged the outing explanation, and will very shortly be paying for it in tears and copious amounts of CCC (crisis consolation chocolate 🍫).

– Speaking of which, bring queue snacks. ALL THE QUEUE SNACKS. I met at least 4 other parents who were on their second day in the park, having stayed overnight, and this was literally the first thing they’d say, in the kind of urgent tone a survivor might use to impart life-saving advice a couple of days into an apocalypse. One particularly frazzled-looking mum admitted to raiding the hotel breakfast bar that morning and loading her husband up like some kind of illicit snack mule after a soul-destroying tantrum in the Go Jetters queue the previous day when she ran out of Pringles…

– A real highlight of the trip is that I think we’ve FINALLY cured Miss O of her Bing obsession. Turning a corner to find an 8-foot sweaty rabbit lumbering with intent towards her really seems to have done the trick…

– You know the bit at the end of the ride where you trundle off to the photo booth and try not to recoil in horror as you, the grimace family, pop up between rows of picture-perfect snaps of other children smiling adorably, and mums who miraculously still have perfect lip gloss and flicky hair despite being on a bloody rollercoaster? I feel like, if you then say ‘God no I’m not paying a tenner for that!’ The guy behind the counter should read the room a bit better and not counter with something along the lines of “Ahh, but for the price of a week in the Maldives you can have it IN A KEYRING!!!” Flipping fantastic Jake, where do I sign??

– You cannot fool the ride attendants into thinking your child is taller than 0.9 metres by precariously balancing his baseball hat on top of his hair and hoping for the best. But, I have to commend the guy in front of us in the Justin’s House queue for giving it a good crack.

– Surrounded by dozens of flashy, interactive, thrills-and-spills-a-plenty rides, Miss O’s absolute favourite place was Charlie & Lola’s House, which was in essence a ballpit, and a tunnel. So yes, we’d essentially travelled 80+miles at stupid o’clock in the morning to do the exact same thing she could do in the soft play hell-hole just around the corner from us

– Remember how ‘In The Night Garden’ was a complete head-fuck but it would still make you SO HAPPY when you heard that theme tune because, afterwards, it meant BEDTIME. And SITTING DOWN. and WINE. Well, those absolute monsters at Alton Towers have completely ruined it by putting the only exit from the In The Night Garden boat ride DIRECTLY THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP! You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, (you certainly can’t fob them off with that lie about gift shops being closed on Mondays anymore ) you HAVE to go through it! We finally made it out with a sticker book and a cuddly veggie from Mr Bloom and counted ourselves lucky. £10 for a sodding runner bean!!! I don’t think anyone’s been shafted this badly by a guy selling beans since Jack and the bloody Beanstalk…

Will we end up there again? Almost certainly. Will we ever manage to get a decent photo of us living the #blessed #makingmemories #familyfun life? Unlikely, given the evidence below, which I can assure you was the very best photo of the day….