Penguin UK - Bollocks to Alton Towers

Uncommonly British Days Out - The Cumberland Pencil Museum, Southey Works, Greta Bridge, Keswick, Cumbria, CA12 5NG - 01768 773626

There's no messing about at the Cumberland Pencil Museum. Within two minutes of arriving you'll find yourself clutching an excellent navy blue pencil topped off with a smart pink rubber. You didn't ask for it but they're clearly trying to convert you to the joys of graphite and cedar wood before you've even stepped inside.

Designed as a showcase for the Cumberland Pencil Company Ltd, it should come as no surprise that this good-humoured museum operates with singleminded missionary verve. It clings to the side of the factory in Keswick where Cumberland pencils have been manufactured since 1832, rolling off the production line in all grades from 9Hard to 9Black. The company used to make an F-Grade too, but it was discontinued so long ago that they can no longer remember what the F stood for.

If there's anything about pencil manufacture you're still not clear on by the time this museum has finished with you, then you really haven't been paying full attention. It's all covered: the billeting, the sieving, the extrusion, not to forget the ever-popular edge runner milling. You can see the things at the raw, dipped, or grooving stages. Pencils don't just happen on their own, you know.

There are kids everywhere. In the words of one of the schoolchildren who was present when we visited the museum, 'these pencils are great!'.

See young eyes light up as they learn that one Californian Incense Cedar tree can provide enough wood to make 150,000 pencils. Watch them point excited fingers at the long, coiled green pencil lead, writhing in its display case like a bowl of wrestling worms. And there is a fairy-tale moral to the story that money-no-object NASA scientists spend millions of earth dollars developing the world's first zero gravity space pen, only for the thrifty Russian cosmonauts to launch themselves happily into orbit with pockets full of pencils.

But there's more. For the unconverted still moping round the exhibits muttering that it's all just a load of boring old pencils, the museum has yet another trick up its sleeve. Bring on the heroic undercover pencil. Originally envisioned by Charles Fraser-Smith, procurer of special equipment for the war effort (and the inspiration for gadget guru Q in Ian Fleming's Bond novels), this pencil was issued to POWs and Bomber Command aircrew during WWII. A Keswick-based team sworn to absolute secrecy carefully filled each of these hollow pencils with a tightly rolled map of Germany and a tiny compass.

Before you leave, don't forget to stop and chat with the delightfully charming and funny ladies running the shop. They seem happy in an almost evangelical way. Perhaps it's all that Kendal Mint Cake they're pushing from baskets on the counter. A diet of heart-racing translucent peppermint sugar and you'd be singing hosannahs to graphite.

The Cumberland Pencil Museum is a member of that fantastic breed of attractions that somehow manages to hold the attention by riffing over and over on the same narrow theme, until you just give in with a grin. All hail the pencil, sturdy workhorse of art and design. Come on, you've always wanted to know how one works.