Brum's own garage
The little yellow car from the British children's series is on show here, in the museum that played his home in the opening and closing titles.
DeFacto — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Rodw — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Rodw — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Alex Chan — CC BY 2.0
Brum, the little yellow car a generation of 1990s children watched on British television, sleeps here: inside an eighteenth-century water mill on the bank of the River Windrush. This museum is Brum's home in the series - the opening and closing sequences were shot in these rooms, while his adventures were filmed in the streets of Birmingham. Around him sit rooms crammed with vintage cars, motorcycles, caravans, enamel advertising signs and one of Britain's larger collections of old toys. Let us be honest about the scale. This is a small, old-fashioned place, closer to a grandfather's attic that has been filling up for a century than to a serious motoring museum. There are no gleaming halls and no world-class rarities; the pleasure is in the visual clutter and the small things — pedal cars, tin toys, old petrol pumps. An hour exhausts it, and it is a very good hour with children under ten or on a wet afternoon, and a much less persuasive one for the car enthusiast who came to Britain for engines. Getting there: Bourton-on-the-Water sits in the middle of the Cotswolds, about ten minutes' drive from Stow-on-the-Wold, thirty to forty minutes from Cheltenham and roughly an hour from Oxford. The nearest station is Kingham, some five miles away, and you will need a taxi from there. Village parking is paid and fills before midday in July and August, when Bourton becomes one of the busiest villages in England, so start early; the museum is a minute on foot from the little stone footbridges. Practical notes: open daily, 10am to 6pm with last admission at 5:15pm. Tickets are bought at the door with no advance booking, and the route through is flat and fine for pushchairs and wheelchairs. If you are travelling in midwinter or around the holidays, check the official site before setting out, as hours can change on those days. Pair it with the Model Village and Birdland, both a few minutes' walk away, for a complete family half-day.
The little yellow car from the British children's series is on show here, in the museum that played his home in the opening and closing titles.
Tin toys, pedal cars, dolls and enamel signs fill the rooms in one of Britain's larger collections of its kind.
The building is an eighteenth-century water mill on the Windrush, and half the charm of the visit is the setting rather than the exhibits.
The Old Mill, Sherborne Street, Bourton-on-the-Water GL54 2BY
With children under ten, or on a rainy day, yes without hesitation: a cheap, entertaining, dry hour. For adults after a real car museum the answer is no; the collection is small and the rooms are tight, and the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, about an hour's drive away, is in another league.
Yes; the village is completely flat and the museum states that access is available throughout, so pushchairs and wheelchairs are fine. The real difficulty is not inside but outside — parking and summer crowds, so arrive early or come after 4pm in July and August.
