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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
ONE TO DO ON YOUR OWN
Milestones & Memories
Hampshire’s living history museum Milestones
is one mile west of Basingstoke. Streets, buildings
and shops have been recreated from two distinct
periods - Victorian and the 1930s. It’s solid bricks
and mortar and the whole thing is under cover in
a massive barn of a building that also has a large
cafe and free coach parking immediately outside.
I’ve always liked Milestones. It’s really well done
around 20,000 individual period items in their
appropriate settings. Far from being a roped off sort
of place you can look in the shop windows and then
open the door and go inside to examine the stock ,
be it old wireless sets in the record and television
set or early gas cookers and electric heaters.
There’s a penny arcade, authentic old sweet shop
(with sweets for sale) and an Edwardian pub open
for lunch Tuesdays to Fridays and a marvellously
nostalgic Collectors Corner that’s totally absorbing.
Oh and for the chaps there’s lots of vintage
vehicles from local firms Thorneycroft and
Taskers as well as some railway and tram stock.
You could arrive for morning coffee in the 1950s
cafe on the mezzanine from where you can look
down over the tiled rooftops of the recreated streets
and spend a happy morning exploring the exhibits.
Group entry is £6.65 for groups of 15 or more
people and it is open daily except Mondays from
10.00am to 4.45pm (11.00am at weekends).
To discuss a visit or to make a booking call the folk
at Milestones on 01256 403905. Options include
presentations by costumed interpreters and you can
pre-book a visit to the sweetshop on Tuesdays to
Fridays: 140 new pennies will buy you one two old
pennies which will buy you a quarter of sweets.
Steam Trains
And to make a day of it? Well stay for lunch at
Milestones and then a 30 minute drive away is the
Mid Hants Railway Watercress Line at Alresford
(groups number 01962 733810). See their website
for the complex colour coded timetables beloved of
the men that run these railways.
www.watercressline.co.uk
Tuesdays, Wednesday & Thursdays from May to
the end of September you can book a 90 minute
cream tea steam train trip at 3.00pm from £14-00
to £17.50 all in depending on the tea you choose.
An Old Working Silk Mill
To keep a lid on costs a 30 minute direct drive will
take you to Whitchurch Silk Mill where a
maximum of 50 people can enjoy a tour of this
working mill at 10.45am or 2.00pm for seniors
£4.50. They’ll do tea and biscuits for £3.20 or a
cream tea for £5.90 to save queuing. They ask for
non-refundable payment three weeks before the
visit. It’s a tad steppy being an old mill but the
setting is gorgeous and the shop’s a real treat.
Open daily except Mondays.
Call them on 01256
892065 or visit
www.whitchurchsilkmill.org.uk.