RAM Museum, Exeter, Devon
The RAM Museum in Exeter is without a doubt one of the best museums in the whole of the South West; you could quite literally spend hours here browsing the displays and you'd leave with a sense of fascination, fulfillment and having learned something new. There's a lot of local history of course, like how the city was rebuilt after the devastation it suffered in the Second World War, and there's plenty of natural history - like the Fine Feather Gallery with a fantastic collection of birds and the Case Histories Gallery where you can see a full size African bull elephant, a bull giraffe (named Gerald), and suspended from the ceiling, a huge fin whale skeleton.
Some of the exhibits are utterly mindboggling, like the 30mm x 5mm carving on a grain of wheat from a Japanese temple complex; then there are collections that are of national importance including artefacts from ancient Greece and Rome, rarely seen things from West Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, and the tomb of an Egyptian mummy. It's all so thought provoking and incredible, so when you've finished looking around go and find a table in the cafe and chat about what you liked best, what you thought of this and what you thought of that. Then see what's on in the temporary art galleries and pop into the museum shop to buy a souvenir before heading back out onto the streets or round the corner to Rougemont Gardens for a stroll in the sunshine.
Open: 10.00am-5.00pm Tues-Sun Admission is free
T: 01392 265858 All information correct at the time of writing