Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

Dusty glass cases stuffed with fossils, rocks and minerals fill this Victorian museum tucked away in Cambridge's Downing Street. It's the sort of place that feels like you've stumbled into a proper 19th-century collection - because you largely have. The Sedgwick Museum holds one of Britain's finest geology collections, built up over centuries and still arranged with that old-fashioned museum sensibility that somehow works better than the modern stuff.

You'll find trilobites the size of your hand, ammonites coiled like ancient snakes, and rocks that have been split open to reveal crystal cathedrals inside. The displays track Earth's history from primordial seas through ice ages to the present day. It's genuinely absorbing if you like that sort of thing - and completely free, which feels like theft at the price.

Geology bores are the obvious audience, but kids who've got past the dinosaur phase often get hooked here. Teenagers studying earth science will find it invaluable. The displays aren't flashy or interactive, mind you - there's no touch screens or reconstructions. Just rocks, labels, and the occasional skeleton of something extinct. That's either brilliant or tedious depending on your tolerance for old-school museum work.

Allow an hour minimum, though an afternoon isn't excessive if you're really into it. Open weekdays 10am-5pm, Saturdays 10am-4pm, closed Sundays. If you're camped at Cherry Hinton or one of the other sites just outside Cambridge, the museum is barely a 10-minute drive from your pitch - proper rainy-day material.