Another Watford family recommended the RAF Museum in Hendon for a rainy day. It’s a huge indoor complex down the A41, and easily reachable by car in 20-30 mins, depending on traffic. It’s also free (though the large car park is pay-and-display)!
The planes are arranged throughout a series of hangers. There’s all types to get up close to, from a Spitfire to modern fighters like a Tornado F3, as well as helicopters next to the café area. We had a drink before looking round: a nice touch having the seating out amongst the exhibits, which made it great for kids who don’t fancy sitting around for too long (also great for buggy parking!)
After looking at some of the planes we moved onto the interactive area for kids. This had loads of fun/educational things about flight and physics, a lot of which were for older children, but our little one loved climbing inside the small helicopter and trying out the ‘bombing run’ with the model plane-on-rails (we forgot to take any snaps here!). We spent a good 20 minues here, but generally this section was looking a little tired and in need of TLC (unlike the planes, which all looked immaculately kept).
There’s loads to see and our little one was flagging after an hour: if you want to fit in all the exhibits with children it’s probably sensible to come more than once!
There were also clean and spacious baby changing facilities – another incentive to come again!