Knowing my daughter reads my blog occasionally, I’ve had to be quite muted the last couple of weeks while we planned her birthday weekend. It did make for an amusingly perplexed look on her face however when I picked her up from her mum on Friday evening and immediately started driving north.

Being generally aware and clued in, she’d worked out in advance that something was going on but not what. As a result, the grin on her face when it became obvious where we were heading was a huge pleasure.

The birthday surprise was a weekend at Alton Towers, staying at the resort and getting early access to the theme park in the morning.

I’ve mentioned before how we’re getting our money’s worth from the Merlin cards, but even if we hadn’t, they came into their own this weekend when it came to food, drink and souvenirs.

There was even a cake, balloon, card and teddy bear waiting for her in our room to add to the small haul of presents from us and close relatives.

We managed to get on most of the rides with minimal waiting by paying attention to the queue length notices, and we had great weather all weekend too.

We really couldn’t ask for a better stay. We’ll certainly be heading back there soon. I think we may be getting rather addicted to rollercoasters…