The Power House

The Power House sits just outside Buckingham as a proper slice of industrial heritage that most people driving past completely miss. It's a Victorian pumping station - all red brick and Victorian engineering pride - that actually still does what it was built to do: pump water. You can wander round the machinery, see the original engines that powered Buckingham's water supply back in the 1880s, and get a genuine sense of how Victorians solved practical problems with cast iron and elbow grease.

It's free to get in, which is a bonus. Expect to spend a good hour here if you're genuinely interested in how things work. Kids under ten might find it a bit dry unless they're already into machines - there's not much interactive stuff, just the heritage and the scale of the equipment. History buffs and engineers will eat it up though. The building itself is worth seeing even if the inside doesn't grab you.

Open daily from 10 until 5, it makes a decent half-hour detour if you're staying at somewhere like Embers Camping over in Claydon. It's close enough to combine with a Buckingham town wander or a longer countryside walk without adding much to your route. Not a destination in itself, but the kind of thing that makes a park holiday richer - a proper local discovery rather than the usual tourist tick boxes.