But we also had to have The Birthday Outing.
My favourite outings have taken us to spacious gardens where we could drift over expansive lawns, chat and admire the Autumn colours.
This year, however, my choice was Flag Fen Museum on the outskirts of Peterborough. It wasn't close by and it wasn't a garden. Nigel patiently agreed to drive us the hour and a half to get there. But like a shared thinks bubble above my menfolks' heads there hovered the words, 'This had better be good.'
'Haven't you heard?' I said knowledgeably, 'It's been called Britain's Pompeii.'
During the lengthy car journey, I read more about Flag Fen. It was part of an entire Bronze Age landscape, inhabited 3,500 years ago, before the Fens were drained for agriculture. There was an ancient wooden causeway and a wooden platform where objects like swords had been deposited as sacrifices to the gods.
However, I was wrong about the Pompeii bit - that epithet belonged to Must Farm, a Bronze Age settlement of five huts built on stilts above water. They had caught fire and then collapsed into the silt beneath, leading to fabulous preservation of everyday objects - hence Britain's Pompeii.
Must Farm was only a few miles from Flag Fen and part of the same Bronze Age landscape, but not open to the public. As the long car journey continued, I decided not to mention this little detail.
Finally we reached Flag Fen. Despite the wonders on display here, it was far more relaxed than the packed London museums. There were helpful staff, and outside, a bunch of crazy Soay sheep.
We admired a section of the causeway which Bronze Age folk had constructed as a path across the fen, built and rebuilt many times by driving piles into the fen and running logs between them.
We investigated the reconstructed circular huts of wattle and daub, thatched over with reeds. We crossed the local river, which now drained the once-fen and Pascoe pointed out a kingfisher dashing away.
And there in one of the outbuildings were the nine (count them!) wooden boats from Must Farm, in an incredible state of preservation.
'You see,' I announced, 'Britain's Pompeii!'
Phew.
Flag Fen is not a huge site - the gardens at Wisley and Kew are definitely larger, but our day out had taken us to another dimension. We had wondered not only through space, but through time as well.
