THE NEXT TRAIN APPROACHING............

This weekend and the previous one has seen the Hogwarts Express steaming its way up the East Coast mainline. It is quite a majestic site, fire box ablaze and steam billowing. It even had Jeremy Clarkson waxing lyrical when the Top Gear Team took on the challenge of racing a steam train against a humble car from London to Edinburgh. This got me thinking about boys and their toys. Or hopefully in this modern day it is no longer thought of as being entirely male dominated. How many of you ladies out there didn't have brothers and missed out on playing with trains? I doubt I was the only one......

I am now making up for lost time. We have a new table set up in the shop with a Brio display ready for the train enthusiast to rave over. The only way to know what everything does is to play with it, so you will find us on our knees conversing with the three year old Brio experts. We are only fulfilling our job descriptions!

Marbel have taken over Brio. They are a Cornwall‐based toy distributor specialising in bringing wooden, quality, classic, traditional, innovative and educational toys to the UK market. The firm was set up six years ago by husband and wife team Christoph and Rebecca Bettin, who started the company after spending several years working in Munich, Germany, for American multinational General Electric. Ever since 1907, when BRIO first began selling toys, they’ve built a solid reputation for producing safe, high-quality products. Today, their commitment to quality and safety is stronger than ever.

Over the last year Brio have added quite a few new lines and are trying to combine both road and rail as a concept. For the really young you can go round a simple track and then disappear into uncharted territory on the living room floor and negotiate chair legs. For the older aficionado you can build tracks over two or three levels and link this with a road network that takes goods or people to any destination the imagination creates. It certainly is a toy that will grow with your child, expanding their imagination, improving hand eye co ordination and dexterity to name but a few. Beware you will become hooked!

We have just had a delivery of Brio, so I had better go and play, no I mean put it away. Till next time have a good week. Julie