Nowhere on earth can challenge my hometown of Northwich for the title of ‘possessor of the most wilfully crowd displeasing museum on earth’.

Northwich felt it was wrong that it should have the world’s only salt museum. So it opened a second one as well. To boast of one salt museum would be a source of unmatched pride for the denizens of Northwich, but two? This truly is heaven on earth.

Many of you will, by this third paragraph, have pondered what a salt museum actually features. You might have deduced that it contains information about how salt is mined as well as geological information about how it came to be there.

WRONG!

Northwich Salt Museum features a single block of salt on a giant pedestal in the middle of a purpose-built chamber of wonder. The Lion Salt Works has the salt in more conventional granular form in a salt cellar made out of finest amethyst. Neither museum offers anything else other than its prime exhibit. This may or may not be true, but it is a fact.

If you fail to attend both the Northwich Salt Museum AND The Lion Salt Works at some point in your life, it means that you are a despicable coward whose bodily organs are made out of actual faeces and you may even be French to boot.

We’ve has another letter from Brian. He feels he’s been duped again and would like to warn our readership.

Dear Weak Holidays,

It’s Brian. Please allow me to share a recent holiday nightmare experienced by myself and my good wife, Doreen. We decided to holiday in a cottage by the side of Loch Ness in Scotland. There was one reason for this trip and one reason alone. Doreen is a massive fan of the 1980s BBC cartoon series ‘Family Ness’. In fact she won’t mind me saying, she is nuts for Nessy. Of course, she was excited at the chance to view the green monster for herself.

Despite the twelve hour car journey we were excited to arrive at Loch Ness and were happy with the cottage on the shore, aptly named ‘Loch Ness Cottage’. The proprietor had kindly baked us a cake and left a note of welcome, signing off with, ‘Happy Nessy spotting!’ All boded well. Doreen could barely contain herself. She hardly slept a wink.

The next morning we set up our deck chairs at 6am and despite the sheeting rain, we were happy to be there, waiting for our first sighting of Nessy. Now, by midday we were starting to get a little restless. But we told ourselves to be patient; maybe, we thought, Nessy is just a late riser, surely he will swing by this afternoon.

Nothing.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And so on.

To the last day of our holiday. We are still sat in our deck chairs, same spot, rain still sheeting down, still waiting for Nessy. A local fisherman walks past and I ask how we could have been here for seven days and not seen the monster once. He looks at me like I’m an imbecile and stalks off, muttering obscenities about tourist w*?*?s in his thick Scottish brogue.

I went to investigate. I visited the nearby village of Drumnadroicht and asked a few questions. What I ascertained still rocks me to the core today.

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER, MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, HAS NEVER EXISTED. IT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR A CREATURE BIGGER THAN A LARGE FISH TO SURVIVE IN LOCH NESS BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF FOOD AND THE TEMPERATURE OF THE WATERS.

Now, let me be clear, I have no complaints with the loch itself. That is a fine example of a large, deep, freshwater loch. I do however have a problem with the LIES.

What upsets me immeasurably is the fact that the BBC peddled these lies to our children throughout the 1980s and continue to do so today in DVD format. And Doreen still hasn’t recovered fully from the pneumonia. Imagine the shock of the locals when a distraught Doreen, on hearing the news, stripped herself naked and, with a mighty roar that reverberated around the loch, charged head first into the freezing grey waters. As for the the locals joking that the lake really did have a monster now, well, I’ll let your good readers decide if that is funny or not. We shall not be returning. And I urge your readers to boycott Loch Ness along with us. For it is a lake built on lies and trickery.

Brian Winstanley
Name and address supplied

Inside Barometer World, you will find ‘a veritable world of barometers’. If you’d found a Bengal tiger reading the news, you’d be a bit surprised, but, I dare say, a bit more impressed.

But no matter. If you’re one of the eight people in the world for whom barometers are more than just a sixth choice way of deducing what the weather’s going to be like, this is the place for you. All your barometry needs will be catered for, except for those which mark you out as a sexual deviant of the highest order. Barometer World is a wholesome place. Keep your filth to yourself.

I’ll be honest. I like barometers.

What can you get at Sandoft Trolleybus Museum that you can’t get anywhere else? Well, let’s just say that it’s home to the world’s largest collection of preserved trolleybuses and leave it at that. Such a boast needs no further expansion.

I’m not ever going to visit this place on the grounds that I can feel myself drifting into the 1970s simply through reading the name. I think trolleybuses predate this period, but there’s a particular kind of nostalgia for functional objects which always makes me think of that decade.

The Trolleybus Museum have a manifesto: “To be nationally acknowledged as the museum of the trolleybus.” I would imagine that won’t be too difficult to achieve. The chances of additional trolleybus museums jumping onto the national trolleybus bandwagon are slim at best, you’d think.

The tagline for the British Lawnmower Museum is the only slightly forced “it’s mower interesting”.

The gallery on the website features 15 different mowers and it’s to be hoped that there are many, many more within the hallowed confines of the museum itself.

Rather alarmingly, they sell a DVD. I’m not entirely certain what it features, but hopefully there’ll be some slow motion shots of grass becoming slightly shorter grass.

The ‘Excellence’ part of this museum’s title indicates that this is no run-of-the-mill baked bean museum. No, this is among the finest baked bean museums in the whole United Kingdom.

A word of warning, however. This museum has been recommended by Danny Wallace and is probably a place to steer clear of on that basis, lest you be infected with a fin haircut and the spirit of chancerish student adventure.

This Wycombe museum will tell you all you need to know about the local history. Presumably, they also had a chair surplus in the area and wanted to put it to good use.

It brings to mind those shops that are clearly run by a husband and wife team with no regard to whether their respective products are remotely related: Knitwear and car parts; chemists and fishing tackle, pipe cleaner modelling and wig maintenance.

Wycombe Local History and Chair Museum focuses on Windsor chairs. For those of us with broader chair tastes, this is something of a disappointment.

We’ve had a letter we feel we should share with you so you don’t end up feeling as short changed as this particular reader.

Dear Weak Holidays.

Last week me and my wife, Doreen, decided to go for a weekend break to Oxford. There was a reason for this and one reason alone: Morse. She won’t mind me saying this: Doreen is Morse Mental. She has the box sets, she has the board game (yes there is one) and she has the t shirt (she made this herself, because although there are official ones out there Doreen felt they didn’t do justice to the Inspector, so she hand stitched his craggy face to within a needle point of perfection herself). Now, we booked into the guest house no problem and it’s a lovely place, can’t fault it at all – Parklands Guest House, Banbury Road. We asked about Morse at said guest house and a lovely young man said ‘You must mean the Morse tour,’ and gave us a leaflet with all the details we would need. Now, you can imagine Doreen’s excitement. She barely slept a wink.

The next day we were there, a good half an hour before the tour started, the pouring rain not dampening Doreen’s excitement one jot. Two hours we walked, two hours, in the rain, looking for Morse on every street corner and in every college quad. And did we ever see him? Did we ever get the big reveal? No. We didn’t. And do you know why? He’s dead! Dead! So whilst ITV 3 are cashing in showing non-stop repeats, the box sets are flying out of the shops and Oxford is doing a Morse Tour, it’s all one big lie. Please print this letter as a warning to your non-suspecting readers who may be duped as we so cruelly were. Imagine the shock of the young man when we returned to the guest house, me propping up a sobbing Doreen, having to reveal to him the death of the great Inspector and Oxford’s big lie. Let me be clear. MORSE IS DEAD.

Brian Winstanley
Name and address supplied