Word of warning

I am probably stating the obvious here but if, like me, you decide to try to find doll’s house shops on your travels – ring them before you bother to go to them.  We've just been in Cumbria for a week (Alston) and I decided to scout any shops I could find in a twenty mile area around where we were staying.  I found nine and visited three of them before I cottoned on to the notion that maybe ringing them first would have been a good idea.  One had been a carpet shop for eight years; another which would have been the size of three shops (40-44 Cecil Street, Penrith) is now three totally different shops; the third simply wasn't there and someone thought they remembered it being there ‘years ago’.  The internet is totally unreliable for this sort of information as people rarely bother to remove their details when they decamp.

We did however go to the Dolls House Emporium's ‘other site’ at Houghton Hall Garden Centre.  This proved to be a good rainy day venue as we managed to occupy ourselves there for a few hours.  It is a huge building and loads to mooch around.  The DHE section is very small and would only be useful for anyone just starting out but for everyone else there is a terrific little Doll’s House Museum.  You have to pay to go in (£2.99 for wrinklies) but it is worth it.  It is a real mixture of nice but amateur stuff through to entrancing museum pieces so there should be something for everyone.