Puzzling Place is on Museum Square in the centre of Keswick, and it is a small, cheap, thoroughly entertaining collection of optical and perceptual illusions.
It has been there for years, it is family-run, and it is the thing Keswick visitors most often recommend to each other for a wet afternoon with children.
The Anti-Gravity Room is the centrepiece — a room built at a deliberate angle so that water appears to run uphill, balls roll the wrong way and people standing upright look impossibly tilted. Knowing exactly how it is done makes no difference at all to the effect, which is the interesting part.
Holograms — a substantial collection, including some very good ones.
The Hologram Gallery and 3D anaglyph images.
Ames rooms and forced-perspective setups where two people of the same height appear wildly different sizes at opposite corners.
Optical illusions, impossible objects, ambiguous figures and a wall of the classic perceptual puzzles.
A camera obscura effect and light and colour demonstrations.
It is presented straightforwardly, with explanations of the perceptual mechanisms involved, and the explanations are good — this is a place that tells you how your brain is being fooled rather than pretending it is magic.
School-age children are the sweet spot, and the recurring adult comment is that they enjoyed it as much as the children did.
Teenagers do well, mostly because the photographs are irresistible.
Adults on their own will get forty-five minutes of genuine interest out of it, particularly the holograms.
Toddlers less so — there is nothing to climb on and the illusions need a certain amount of understanding to land.
Admission is cheap — repeatedly noted as good value, which in a Lake District tourist town is worth saying.
Time: forty-five minutes to ninety minutes.
Booking: pre-book when Keswick is busy. The building is small, capacity is limited and there are real queues at peak times — wet days in school holidays especially.
Location: Museum Square, in the middle of the town, a minute from the market place.
Access: the building has stairs and, by the nature of the exhibit, some deliberately sloping floors. Check ahead if that is a problem.
Weather: entirely indoors, which is why it is busy when it rains.
Keswick’s wet-weather options are limited and this is one of the best of them. The obvious combination is with the Derwent Pencil Museum ten minutes away and Keswick Museum at the other end of the town — three indoor attractions within easy walking distance, which together fill a bad day.
Theatre by the Lake covers the evening.
A small attraction of optical and perceptual illusions, including a gravity-defying room and a hologram collection.
Forty-five minutes to ninety minutes.
School-age children upwards, and adults enjoy it as much. It is less suited to toddlers.
Yes, when Keswick is busy — the building is small and queues form on wet days in school holidays.
No — it is consistently described as good value.