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With the rain absolutely pouring and wind blowing a gale on Sunday afternoon, we (myself, my husband and our two youngest children, 4 and 8) made our way down to the Exhibition Centre at Liverpool to the Great Brick Adventure, an event by Bright Bricks. Parking close by (thankfully) we paid the event rate, £5 on the pay and display car park then walked the two minutes or so over to the centre itself.

On entering the hall I thought this might be a couple of hours event tops, with some amazing structures and their accompanying sign posts giving the details. The kids were very excited, especially when coming face to face with a life size Bengal tiger, Tenzin, that took six people 392 hours to build using 84,780 bricks (complete with sound effects) and the most intricate zebras, Zelma took 6 people 268 hours and 38,440 to build.

Mixed in were interactive activities, the warriorbots session was ‘just ending’ and we had a turn on the flicking flies into the lego frog’s mouth. The atmosphere was one of quite subtle concentration, as fans and super fans got involved, including a charity build for Liverpool’s Children’s hospital. As I say it seemed like a nice place to spend a couple of hours. Then (in what seemed like a heartbeat) warriorbots (my kids made the obvious connection and called it lego robot wars) was back on and our middle lego enthusiast was chosen to come and take a turn on driving the bot, winning his round to much cheering!

Suddenly we were involved, the staff were super, welcoming and encouraging. In the centre of the room both children completed a piece of shared art work by copying a pattern onto a block to contribute to a mural and made blocks to be part of the master build; the hippopotamus being built towards the rear of the exhibition. We made our own lego figure (£5 each) with our names inscribed on them then settled down for a quick spot of lunch.

Note…we took a picnic and whilst there was a café it was arena prices, £7.50 for burger and chips, £2.30 for a regular coffee. It was right in the centre of Liverpool so I can’t imagine it would be too hard to locate something but it’s worth noting if you are planning the next stop at Harrogate Convention Centre that we stayed 5 hours in total so planning some snacks is a good idea!

After lunch we went to find the mythical beasts. A Harry Potter enthusiast, our 8 year old again was beside himself, guessing how many bricks each structure took and reading about each of the characters. Some of the creations are truly incredible, the seven-headed Hydra, complete with glowing red eyes, which took six builders 112 hours to create using a 177,000 bricks being a highlight. At the end the creators were building the Temple of Artemis, again using the bricks we created and we were there just in time for completion, a team photo and a bit of dressing up!

Finally we went to take part in some of the free building available, choosing lego over duplo and joining some pretty creative people who were making robots, people and all manner of animals… yes, my daughter and I made the classic, a house. Whilst our youngest says making the hippopotamus and towers was her favourite the 8 year old loved making his first pyramid in this area with the bricks colour themed to encourage making architecture.

This was a fabulous day for all the family (and a fair few were definitely there without the family!) Just dive in and get involved.

The Great Brick Adventure continues at Harrogate Convention Centre 31st August – 2nd September. Tickets are priced at Full price Adult£13.45Child (under 16) £11.45Family of 4 (max 2 adults) £39.80

If you are travelling by train, I found a link for 25% discount on LNER trains using promo code HCC25 as an added bonus!

NB: We were invited to review the Great Brick Adventure, but the adventure and opinions are definitely our own.