If it’s a step back in time you’re looking for, Beamish open air museum in County Durham should be high on your list of places to visit.

Beamish has won countless awards since it opened in 1970, including European Museum of the Year.

It’s an amazing place when you consider that the majority of the exhibits were dismantled and transported to the museum to be rebuilt, brick by brick.

One of the most popular tourist attractions in the North East, more than 300,000 people each year visit to experience what life was like in this region in the mid-1800s to early 1900s.

During the February half-term holidays, admission at Beamish is being discounted to £5 per person. As this is the winter season, your visit will centre on The Town and tramway only, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to see and do. There’s even more to see on a return visit in the summer; in all, there are 300 acres to explore.

The best way to start your journey back through time is by hopping aboard a Beamish tram. The tramway runs on a mile-and-a-half circuit of the museum, which will help you get your bearings.

You can have a sneak preview of the Collier Lamp Cabin, a new £1 million exhibit which will officially open in March. Some of the collection of safety lamps will be on display, with a costumed miner to explain just how vital lamps were and show how they were lit, cleaned, repaired and maintained.

There’s a poignant selection of work by local schoolchildren commemorating the greatest tragedy in the history of the Durham coalfield when, at 3.45pm on February 16, 1909, an explosion rumbled beneath the town of Stanley, followed seconds later by another, louder explosion. In all, 168 men and boys lost their lives in the disaster which devastated the town.

You could then take a stroll along the cobbled streets of The Town watching the ‘population’ of Beamish pass by. Soldiers, sailors, and nannies with their wards can pass you at any time, all in authentic costume. At the western end of The Town, which represents a typical North East market town in the years leading up to the First World War, is a Victorian park with ornamental flower beds and a bandstand from Saltwell Park, Gateshead.

Ravensworth Terrace came originally from nearby Gateshead. These fashionable houses were built for professional people, and this is where you will find the home and surgery of a dentist, along with a solicitor’s office. The dentist might even be on hand to show you how they extracted teeth back then – ouch! Those of a nervous disposition should move straight on to the music teacher’s house.

At the end of the terrace is The Sun Inn, originally from Bishop Auckland, which dates back to the 1860s. You can enjoy a beverage here as the inn is licensed to sell alcoholic drinks during opening hours.

The Co-operative shop depicts just was it was like at the beginning of the Co-op movement. From food to toiletries, fruit and veg to milk and haberdashery to the undertaker, the Co-op certainly lived up to its slogan of ‘providing everything from the cradle to the grave’.

Next door is the Motor & Cycle Works, a typical town garage of 1913 with a showroom display including the magnificent, locally-built 1907 Armstrong Whitworth vehicle.

A visit to the sweet factory and confectionery is a mouth-watering must for all ages. Here the smell of freshly-produced sweets like parma violets, cough lozenges and sherbet dabs, add to the riot of colour in the shop. I dare you to leave without buying a bag of pear drops or black bullets.

The stationer’s shop, printing works, solicitor’s office, bank and livery stables are all working and mostly manned examples, including the Town Stables with its splendid Gelderlander carriage horses, which pull the carts and occasionally the tram. The Carriage House, complete with foreman’s office and shoeing forge, holds a fine display of horse-drawn vehicles.

Finally, at the Masonic Hall, from Park Terrace in Sunderland, you can see inside a typical meeting place and find out more about the world of Freemasonry in 1913 as members gathered for an evening meeting of a craft Masonic lodge.

Beamish is a really ambitious project that is more of a life experience than a museum.

I always feel that the word ‘museum’ conjures up visions of dusty exhibits in dark rooms. This is living, breathing history of how people lived and worked in Victorian and Edwardian England.

Everything is shown in context, with costumed staff on hand to bring the past vividly to life. Perhaps they should change the name to The Beamish Experience – maybe a little sugar-coated, but none the less enjoyable for that.