I can’t believe it’s that time of year again! Somerset House has opened its ice rink and for us this signals the start of our festive activities before Christmas! I’m sure it’s a tad earlier than last year but hey, we’re not complaining! More time means more fun things to fit in before the big day and as you may know if you read my blog regularly, we do love to fit lots of activities in! We would ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS recommend skating at Somerset House and yet again this year, it hasn’t disappointed us!

We actually talk about skating here all throughout the year, it’s a much loved part of Christmas for us and even when Florence was teeny tiny she loved it! The skating boots start at size 7 for children so have never been small enough for Florence and yet again this year she has had to pad out her boots (which are only 2 sizes too big now) with socks!

Somerset House is just so beautiful and magical that it really doesn’t matter how far in advance to Christmas you go, you simply can’t help but be enchanted by the atmosphere which is helped in its creation by the giant Christmas tree and Tom’s Skate Lounge not to mention the Christmas Arcade. For adults it can be a wonderfully romantic date or even a full on club night as you can skate/dance the night away on ice to popular night club DJ’s taking to the decks; for us of course it’s the family element we love so much and they do that pretty darn well too!

Somerset House is definitely atmospheric and Christmas mood making!

Children over 8 can take skating lessons but for younger ones, like ours, they can simply just try it out on the ice using one of the penguins to steady themselves and give them confidence! I was rather hoping to get Jimmy, with his even smaller feet than Florence, onto the ice for the first time, his sister was just a few months older than him when she tried it first but when we arrived he was sleeping. We decided that because he really and truly is too young to skate, we would let him have his nap and Florence and I took to the ice on our own!

Skating fun for us!

This year she has grown in confidence so much and did so well! I was very proud of her as she went off on her own with her penguin, didn’t mind when I went for a whirl around the main rink leaving her in the children’s area and even wanted to go round the big rink with me (and a helper)! She absolutely loved it and at nearly 4 I think she is the perfect age! Don’t get me wrong, she was brilliant last year but now she just has that little bit more control!

I made this little video to show you how much fun we had!

After the skating we warmed up with a hot chocolate in the skate lounge and then the children got to take part in a FREE workshop making snow globes. There are workshops like this on throughout the whole year and it’s certainly worth looking at the schedule to see what’s on when because they had loads of fun marred only by some miserable woman who came and shouted at us for sitting in her seat… I had taken a seat from a table with lots of empty ones and no one sitting at it (there were lots available at other tables too) but this woman came marching over and demanded my child get off her seat then she shouted at me for being so rude as to steal it! Some people eh! Well, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without some old scrooge wanting to baa humbug at people, I just hope she merries up a bit for her own sake, she had a face like a cat’s bottom! Not Somerset House’s fault by any means and rather funny as everybody around just just open mouthed stared at her silliness with us – she must have felt very foolish!

A warming hot chocolate!

And some festive art and crafts!

Aside from the Scroogey woman we had a blast! The perfect way to kick off the season and an icy start in the best possible way!

For more information and to book tickets please see the website www.somersethouse.org.uk.

I have not been paid to write this post but I was invited to a pre opening skate session for the purpose of honest review.

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