Ahoy there landlubbers! Set sail for the National Maritime Museum where the latest free exhibition features some of the most elegant and fascinating toy boats to have ever ventured forth across the mighty duck pond.

This nostalgic collection of traditional miniature yachts, submarines, battleships, paddle steamers and nautical toys is completely charming. I wanted to take them out of the cabinets and play with them. Is it nearly bathtime?

Take your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews to see the toy boats: they’ll want to spend the summer holiday making and sailing boats and you can pretend you’re doing it for their benefit.

Need boatbuilding tips? One section of the exhibition explains how toy boats can be powered with clockwork, steam, batteries or rubber bands, so you won’t be totally at sea. There are family workshops at the end of July where little sailors can make their own boats.

Some of my favourite exhibits included a metal Mechano submarine which was full of holes and didn’t look terribly seaworthy, a board game called The Dover Patrol and a tiny deep sea wreck reminiscent of the Titanic which was found at the bottom of the pond in Kensington Gardens when they drained it in 1923. Most of the boats look so realistic that it’s amusing to see a great big key sticking out of the deck for winding up the clockwork engine.

The exhibition opens this Saturday and the National Maritime Museum is holding a special free day of celebrations with 1930s theme, including dressing up, deck games and toy boat experts on hand to answer all your questions.

Admission free. Open daily 10:00 – 17:00, 1 May – 31 October 2010 www.nmm.ac.uk

This morning I headed down to a sneak preview of Greenwich’s newest visitor attraction. Discover Greenwich is a fantastic mix of museum, exhibition, education centre, tourist information centre, café, and brewery.

Its different titbits of information, entertainment, interaction and refreshments reflect the diversity of Greenwich itself perfectly.

As a destination, Greenwich is also a potentially confusing mix of Tudor palace, old hospital, art gallery, observatory, architectural treasure and naval college. What the new exhibition-and-more at Discover Greenwich does so well is bring all the different bits of this amazing heritage site together into one manageable room.

I really liked the way traditional ways of displaying attraction information were mixed with interactive objects to twist, build, play with, doodle, watch, listen to, take away, and try on! Discover Greenwich is certainly a classy opener to one of the world’s heritage sites, and a great way to introduce all the different aspects of Greenwich in one space.

Once you’ve tasted a particularly tempting piece of Greenwich’s diverse platter of historical, architectural and cultural offerings, you can head out into Maritime Greenwich and explore your selected morsel further.

Or, if you’re particularly interested in Greenwich’s gastronomical past, there’s the fantastic Old Brewery, run by the Meantime Brewing Company, promising an “astonishing range of beers”. The experimental micro-brewery is going to create historical and modern beers, including recreations of recipes drunk at the time of Henry VIII, and avant-garde beers, such as Mojito Pilsners and Juniper Pale Ales. Like the sound of those!

Discover Greenwich opens to visitors on 23 March. Check out more images from Discover Greenwich on flickr. Give us your feedback in the comments below!