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ASK most kids if they fancy a trip to an art exhibition and you’re unlikely to get an overly-enthusiastic answer. 

But what if that art exhibition included a ball pit, an enormous bouncy castle and flying balloons? You might suddenly have a mini art critic on your hands. 

Step in the Balloon Museum, which last graced the UK in 2023 with its EmotionAir: Art you can feel exhibition at Old Billingsgate in 2023. 

It’s now back, this time at Immerse London on Excel Waterfront with its latest offering EUPHOЯIA – Art is in the Air. 

The concept of the Balloon Museum is that it’s a new way to experience contemporary art, with large-scale installations created by international artists including Turner Prize winner Martin Creed. 

EUPHOЯIA in particular, invites those artists to use air and inflatable materials “as a contemporary artistic language” that “invites visitors to explore, interact and see the familiar in unexpected ways.” 

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It’s fair to say all of this went entirely over my seven year old’s head on our visit, both literally and figuratively speaking. 

Because while it might be about art, it’s also A LOT of fun. 

Our first stop was a giant glass-walled room filled with enormous balloons that you have to push your way through to reach the end. 

There was also a room filled with large inflatable cubes that we used to build an enormous fort, one with an enormous bed that could fit 20 people and a giant Covid virus-style inflatable, among others. 

But our favourites were the huge ball pit bigger than a ballroom, the most enormous bouncy castle I’ve ever seen – at least 25m in length and filled with inflatables, a balloon whirlwind and a very clever mechanical tree that dropped bubbles filled with smoke. 

Of course, all of this also made for some incredible photo opportunities too. 

We’ve got about a gazillion grinning selfies from our visit – the hallmark of every great Millennial day out.  

So will my son now be requesting a membership to the Tate Modern on his Santa List? Probably not. 

But he will definitely be far more open to my next suggestion of a trip to a gallery… how to explain there won’t be any inflatables to play with once there is another matter altogether. 

Tickets for EUPHOЯIA – Art is in the Air at ExCeL London, Royal Victoria Dock, from £20 for children and £26 for adults, with family tickets from £59.

As we walked through the orchard to our cabin at dusk, shadowy figures emerged from the mist. We stood stock-still and held our breath. Most of them saw us and fled, but one held its ground, unwilling to relinquish its stolen goods. Muntjac have clearly developed quite a taste for windfall apples.

My boyfriend and I left the little deer to dinner and walked on to the quince orchard, where our cabin waited in the far corner. This is the sixth Red Cabin to open in the UK. The first was on a sheep farm in Kent; others followed on farms and vineyards in south and east England. Ours was on Drove Orchards on the edge of the village of Thornham, on the north Norfolk coast.

On this chilly late October evening, our first priority was to start three fires: one in the wood-fired stove to heat the cabin, the others for the built-in sauna and the hot tub on the deck. It sounded arduous but was actually easy as the stoves were ready laid with starter logs – guests simply have to light the log, then add more wood when needed.

The cabin was soon toasty – its recycled plastic insulation keeps it pretty warm anyway – but it would take a couple of hours for the sauna and tub to heat up. We cracked open the rhubarb cider we had bought from the onsite farm shop and settled down to watch for owls. We heard one or two calling, but only geese passed overhead.

The sauna is at one end of the cabin, accessed from the deck. We started stints in it when it reached a pleasant 40C, but kept stoking it until it got to a sweaty 70C. We waited longer for the hot tub, finally easing into it when it was steaming and the sky was filled with stars. Like all the cabins, the one at Drove Orchards is completely private; we were overlooked only by trees.

After such a relaxing evening, we slept soundly in the kingsize bed with superbly squishy pillows, and woke to the view of woodland through the huge picture window. According to the design notes, the cabins are built for “calm rather than cosiness”, with Japanese and Scandinavian influences. The unfussy design allows nature to take centre stage, as it did on this bright autumn morning. Sunlight streamed into the cabin as we made coffee in the tiny kitchen and drank it out on the deck, listening to the birdsong.

The cabins are all identical, built in Britain by a small team using largely British materials (the sauna components are Finnish). They are built on a wheeled chassis, so they don’t need concrete foundations, and made from timber, plywood, cork, wool and hemp. They are off-grid – electricity is generated by solar panels on the roof and stored in batteries, and the “smart” dry toilet uses a system that bags waste (guests just press a button, like regular flushing). Each cabin has water from the mains supply.

After hot showers in the compact bathroom, we set off on foot. We had driven to Drove Orchards, but actually you don’t need a car – the nearest train station is King’s Lynn, and the Coastliner bus from there stops right outside the orchard. The other cabins are also in secluded but not wild locations, within walking distance of a pub and various attractions. On Uplees Fruit Farm in Oare, Kent, for example, there is a private swimming lake right outside. At Drove, it is a half-hour walk on footpaths and boardwalks across the marshes to Thornham Beach and Holme Dunes nature reserve.

We fancied a longer walk, so we turned right rather than left at the coast and headed to RSPB Titchwell Marsh, then walked along the vast sandy beach to Brancaster. The tide was way out but we still had to take off our boots, roll up our trousers and wade across some icy channels. We continued to Brancaster Staithe before catching the bus back, so we had time to explore the shops at Drove – as well as the farm shop, there are independent homewares, antiques, vintage clothes and a wine merchant, plus a cafe, pizzeria and chippy.

We decided to head into Thornham for dinner, about 15 minutes’ walk from the cabin. The cosy 16th-century Lifeboat Inn serves Norfolk drinks (Woodforde’s Wherry beer, Flint Vineyard’s sparkling rosé) by an open fire, and has a seasonal menu – I had an excellent pumpkin katsu curry (£22).

The Red Cabin’s founder, Tally Rix, aims to help farmers diversify. She works with individual landowners, and with tenant farmers through the National Trust, to select new sites for the cabins. Two more are opening this month and next: at Wyken Vineyards in Stanton, Suffolk, and Rathfinny Wine Estate in Alfriston, East Sussex.

We visited Drove a little too late for this year’s pick-your-own season, when guests can help themselves to 140 varieties of apples, pears, plums, cherries and quinces. Instead, we toasted the harvest with a glass of newly pressed sparkling apple juice. If the delicious drink was anything to go by, I could see why the local deer are so keen on the fruit.

The trip was provided by The Red Cabin. Cabins from £220 a night, sleeps up to four, theredcabin.co.uk

The Metropolitan Police were called to Dollis Road in Finchley at around 12:40 GMT to reports a tree had fallen onto a moving car, and the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Chief Inspector Guy Ellwood, from the North West Command Unit, said: “This is a deeply tragic incident and our thoughts are with the loved ones of the young man who lost his life.”

A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said it sent incident response officers, paramedics from its hazardous area response team, and a trauma team from London’s Air Ambulance to the scene.

Earlier, Police Scotland said a man died after being hit by a falling tree in southern near Castle Douglas.

During Storm Boelo and the earlier Storm Austen, which hit the UK on Friday, 838,700 properties across the country faced power cuts, according to the ENA.

Wind gusts peaked on Sunday morning at 85mph in Machrihanish, in Argyll and Bute, and 84mph in both Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, and Capel Curig in north Wales.

An amber wind warning issued by the Met Office was in place until 21:00 on Sunday across Scotland and parts of northern England.

A yellow warning that also covered other areas of the north of England, including Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as well as parts of the East and West Midlands and North Wales, also expired at 21:00.

The Met Office urged people to “stay indoors as much as possible”, adding: “If you do go out, try not to walk, or shelter, close to buildings and trees.”

The strongest gusts have continued to spread eastwards across the UK on Sunday.