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From the Big Dipper to dinosaurs, researchers yesterday revealed the nation's favourite 'most affordable' Bank Holiday attractions. With prices of family days out going through the roof and household finances being squeezed, internet search engine Ask Jeeves set out to answer the question "where should I take my family this Bank Holiday weekend?" Researchers at Ask Jeeves, which has just brought back the butler character after three years, scoured their database to find which cheap UK sites are among our favourites. Top of the list was Blackpool Pleasure Beach where a £5 entry fee allows visitors into the country's most popular theme park. Hair-raising rides - which cost extra, of course - include the Pepsi Max Big One, the Wild Mouse and Avalanche. For families happy enough to watch other thrill seekers getting their kicks, Blackpool Pleasure Beach is hard to beat. From terror to T Rex, the second best most affordable attraction was London's Natural History Museum, where kids can come face to face with life-like dinosaurs and a giant blue whale. The thousands of exhibits at the Natural History Museum make it a place to visit time and again without getting bored. Going back to nature sees number three on the list as the River Lee country park in Epping Forest, Essex, with its scores of wooded tracks and wildlife in abundance. Back to the heart of London for affordable attraction number four, the Tate Modern art gallery on London's Southbank where giant interactive exhibits frequently fill its giant Turbine Hall. At number five in the list if Xscape Castleford at Wakefield in Yorkshire, where entry is free to wander round and watch the action. Visitors can pay for separate activities such as skiing, rock climbing, bowling and cinemas. During school holidays there’s free family entertainment including workshops, performers and face painting. More than 50 acres of rolling sand dunes help Camber Sands in East Sussex achieve number six on the list of most affordable attractions. Up to 25,000 people visit the dunes on sunny summer days, drawn by their coastal beauty and the wildlife attracted there. At number seven on the list is Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, East Anglia's most popular tourist attraction, occupying a nine-acre seafront location. The main park itself has over 20 large rides as well as crazy golf courses, water attractions, kiddie rides and awe-inspiring white-knuckle classics. Last year more than 1.4 million people visited The Pleasure Beach, putting it in the top ten free entry amusement parks in the UK. Sheffield's Winter Gardens is Ask Jeeves' eighth most searched for affordable UK attraction, where visitors can explore one of Europe's largest temperate glasshouses. The 21 metre high glasshouse is home to more than 2,000 plants from round the world. At number nine in the list is the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh where exhibits include Viking brooches, Pictish stones, ancient chessmen and more modern attractions such as Dolly the cloned sheep, rockets, robots and F1 cars. London's famous Imperial War Museum is number ten on the list of affordable attractions where visitors can go back in time to the muddy trenches of World War I and real-life images from World War II. Combined with sights, sounds and smells of the battlefield, the War Museum is a day not to be missed from history. Ask Jeeves spokeswoman Nadia Kelly said: "With families watching the pennies more than ever nowadays we wanted to find out the best value attractions in time for this coming Bank Holiday weekend. "It proves that a great family day out need not cost the earth if you ask the right people. "Tourist attractions are growing ever more sophisticated in how they present information to the public. People are actively turning to the net to discover details they would traditionally have had to use the phone for. So it's massively important to any business to make sure that when people search, they find a good website with all the information people need." Table: TOP TEN MOST AFFORDABLE ATTRACTIONS IN BRITAIN:
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