This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete

A museum devoted entirely to obsolete technology sounds like a niche idea, but it's genuinely absorbing. Based near Birchington, this place celebrates all the stuff we've junked over the decades - think early computers, defunct phones, broken gadgets, and the kind of machinery your parents thought was cutting-edge. It's partly museum, partly time capsule, partly monument to planned obsolescence.

What makes it work is the sheer nostalgia factor. You'll recognise things. A Commodore 64 sitting there. A chunky mobile phone from 2005. The VCR player your nan still has somewhere. There's something oddly moving about seeing technology that once felt revolutionary rendered useless by progress. Kids find it funny more than anything - "people actually used those?"

The real audience here is anyone over 35 with a sense of humour about their own mortality, plus tech enthusiasts who get genuinely interested in how things were engineered. It's not a massive day out - reckon on ninety minutes properly - but it's the sort of place that genuinely makes you think. Admission details aren't immediately clear, so ring ahead.

If you're staying at Birchington Vale or Sandwich Leisure just down the road, this fits nicely into a rainy afternoon. It won't challenge Sandwich Castle for drama, but it's proper Kent quirk. Low-key, slightly eccentric, and utterly unpretentious.