Something For The Weekend

Take on your own Amazon

We were beginning to get fed up with people coming back from their holidays and telling stories of how they swam with dolphins, climbed waterfalls or went white water rafting! It's not they aren't great things to do, it's just that we were starting to get a bit jealous.

So if we couldn't afford a holiday to the real Amazon, where could we do it over here? We also set ourselves a limit. It had to cost under £50 each including travel and a post raft beer.

The lunatics are running the asylum, making the most of the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy

We've heard all about the summer exhibition a million times this year alone. We knew that Tracey Emin was helping select the exhibits this year and we saw the truck delivering the latest sculpture to take pride of place in the courtyard, but we wanted more. How could we make the most of our visit to the Academy? Our intrepid reporter Kate, ducked through a side door and joined one of the free tours of the building itself.

 

Host your own Canada day party

Canada Day, Eh?
Okay, so even if all Canadians don’t insert the fabled ‘eh?’ into every spoken sentence it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to do it on Canada Day.  There are plenty of other ways to soak up Canadian culture as well

Find your favourite album cover

Ever fancied gathering your mates together and reshooting your favourite album cover, but with you as the star? Here's a few ideas of ones that you can remake quite quickly.

More than just a pile of bricks

We'd already booked our tickets and were ready for our day out - or at least my nephew, Jake was!

If I'm honest I was dreading Legoland, Windsor on a sunny Sunday in June thinking we would have to queue to get off the M4, then have to queue to get into the park itself and then for all the rides but actually it was a breeze. Armed with a picnic and a few toys for the car, we left London for our 40 minute journey at about 9:15am to make sure we got there for the 10am opening.

Become a Gladiator

Let's be fair, I don't look much like an athelete, certainly not a Gladiator. In fact on my last visit to Thorpe Park the staff had to double check that I could fit in the rollercoaster restraints (not one of my finest moments). I thought that my sporting days were long gone, until someone mentioned Zorbing. Surely even I could do that!

What's your top 3 at Chessington World of Adventures?

It was strange walking back into Chessington world of adventures after a gap between visits of nearly 15 years. Part of me wanted all the rides that I used to love to still be there, while the other half didn’t want to ruin the great memories that I had of the place. I wasn’t disappointed.

The 5 part guide to hosting your own festival

We’ve all seen the adverts featuring a group of guys doing karaoke on the main stage at an unnamed festival. Genius, pure genius; but how could you host your own festival? And even if it is just you and your mates, surely you would need to be top of the bill!

We set our crack team of festival specialists the mission of helping you with some ideas of how to do it.

Where are all the reality TV stars now? Les Miserables featuring X factor runner up Cassandra Compton

With I’d do anything crowning its winner, and big brother unveiling its new selection of overly desperate wannabes, we wondered how and where we can see our previous favourites after their 5 minutes of fame finish. Many of them have begun to appear in some of our most famous musical productions. The summer months can be the best time of year to get tickets for the top west end musicals so over the next few months we’ll be updating you on their performances in some of the new releases (and long running classics).

Hidden Treasure, get your hands on the gold bars of the Bank of England

We keep hearing about the credit crunch and how no one has any money any more. It seems to be in every paper and on every news show. Enough already, we set out to track down some gold and jewels.