Now it’s time to think about a winter weekend break, buy the Daily Mail on Saturdays (not just because I work for Northcliff) it has all the cheap offers of weekend hotels, £20 to £25.00 for a room for four is not unusual.
Last year we had a break in Plymouth, the towns great for shopping and I visited Top Secret Magic http://www.topsecretmagic.co.uk/ it can be found in Jack Cohen’s Magic & Joke Shop in the lower half of the town.
The present owner Malcolm Norton has been a professional magician for 20 years and is happy to show any of the hundreds of tricks he stocks.
If you happen to be a burglar I can recommend his lock-picking section.
But the main point of our visit was The National Marine Aquarium Plymouth http://www.national-aquarium.co.uk/.
It was the first aquarium in the United Kingdom to be set up solely for education, conservation and research, we were going for the second time.
Visitors can walk under the deepest tank in Europe. A dizzying 10.5 metres deep, and watch sharks only inches from the glass.