I was impressed and disappointed with this site at the same time. I will start with my negative points and then move onto the nicer stuff afterwards.

You can not go up, on or in the Lovell telescope. I wouldn’t normally “tick” something off my list unless I’ve truly experienced it 100%, but according to the staff there this would never be a possibility as it is still in use, and the only people allowed on it are the people that work on it. I feel that if this is the case they should have picked a different observatory that allows visitors, even if it meant charging a lot and pre-booking well  in advance.

Now on the subject of charging lots, I had to pay £4 for the parking. I was only at the site for 1 hour, meaning this cost more than many cities charge, not to mention I had to pay my fare ontop of that. The site is in the middle of the countryside and the “gardens” are not yet compete, so until there is more to do/see there I strongly believe that there should be only one charge, the entrance one.

On a lighter note though the telescope looked amazing, I had never seen anything like it in my 24 years of being alive and the whispering satellite dishes were also remarkable (I have since been to multiple cathedrals with whispering galleries, but this was my first experience with anything like it). I am unsure if this site deserved WHS statues yet without having all their work completed, but hopefully they will keep adding interesting things to do, see and teach, so even if people can’t go up the magnificent observatory, they’ll be able to keep entertained in other ways.