Le Langon Holiday

Time to escape from it all for our Summer holidays, this year we're heading to a wonderful looking French villa in Le Langon, France to relax with other family members, ten in all of us. 

As you can see from the map it's a bit of an epic journey which we did in a 3 car convoy with as few as breaks as possible, although possibly more than necessary.

However traveling this far with 4 children under 8, especially as one of mine gets car sick, was not going to happen in a day so we planned a stop just outside of Calais for the night. 

                               

Tips for long car journeys with kids(or how we survived 2 days driving with kids):

Portable DVD players

DS/tablet device (fully charged)  

Bottles of water/juice

Snacks (but not cheese if they may be sick, as it stinks) 

Colouring books/felts

Blankets

Loom bands(in lock tight tub)

Lego(in lock tight tub)

Activity books 

Teddy/dolls

Sunglasses

Sickbags

Easy to reach change of clothes for all family members

Wetwipes 

It was my Mother In Laws birthday the first day of travel which led to a lot of present opening at the rest stops along the way. We made really good time, unfortunately there was a delay of a few hours on the Chunnel which set us back. So it was a bit of a rush to get to our hotel in France in time for supper, where we had a cake waiting for Sue, who was caught totally by surprise.

L'Escale Hotel is a wonderful stop off before or after the Chunnel, the flowers everywhere are stunning and the rooms pleasant and well sized. The restaurant served an amazing array of seafood to get our taste buds tingling on our first French evening. 

The seafood platter below was my delight, although I wasn't very taken with Oysters and was slightly shocked it was served ice cold, it was a fantastic meal. 

The next morning we all met up for breakfast, the kids were taken back with the amount of choice they got, an array of breads, cereals, pancakes, hams, cheese, and fruits. 

Although I think the biggest joy came when they were given their own pot of hot chocolate when the grown ups got coffee. Well as you can see we're raring to get on to the holiday house. 

Bon voyage!

The Last Day of Summer

 So I was going to post a lovely shot of our town on the last day of Summer, but like the majority of Summer it was pouring down.  

So instead I thought I post some pictures of our lovely trip to Allonby Beach instead.

The children were grumpy, and bored as the evening became warm; and when Daddy came home from work we bundled them into the car for an adventure.

With shells to find, rocks to balance and the wind in our hair we enjoyed just being.

I hope you enjoyed your Summer 2012.

Amanda.x.

Darling Fell

Well as you can tell this wasn't today, earlier in the week we took the kids to The Lakes. Our plan was to climb Darling Fell which looked easy enough for them, or at least did on paper.
They enjoyed being out in sunshine and Summer clothes for a change.

This is Darling Fell, it's very close to Loweswater a tranquil little place which gets missed for the bigger Lakes. As tourists skim this area there's not as much parking, mostly National Trust ones dotted round.
We found one on the side of the road which led up to the fell next to Darling and the fields below.

Has you can see it turned out to be a wonderful, bright day.  Costs can stack up for days out during the holidays so walks around the local countryside are great as they're free.  We took a picnic which I think is always fun, the kids love eating out as it gives them the freedom to run around in between courses.
We always express the importance of taking everything back with that we came with, and not litter the Fells.

I think walks in the countryside lead to valuable learning opportunities, animals eating litter, farming, how to climb a sty, names of Fells and Lakes, sheep's wool, types of trees and probably a hundred other topics were touched on.
In the end we didn't make it to the top of Darling fell as the path was unmarked that way and the route to the top of the a joining fell was to steep and wild with thistle and bracken for the children(and me). We still had a great trek out.

This is Lucas climbing his first sty all on his own.

Have you been on any great country walks this year. Feel free to post your blog links in the comments below for everyone to see.
Love Amanda.x.

Watchtree- Summer

Watchtree is our local nature reserve this I've previously spoke about here, so I'll not go into how amazing the place is again but just show you some lovely photographs from out latest walk here from a week ago.

I love foxgloves, the hues of colour always in-trance me, more sun when a rare blast of sunlight shines through them.

They were shooting up everywhere in the woodland area, a shot of colour amongst so much green. Although the Summer has been a let down for us it looks like the trees and shrubbery(love that word).
It was sad to see walking round at the nest notes (little messages left by staff about nearby nests) that a lot were washed out by the rains. 

For a frugal day out with family this is amazing, it costs nothing to go in the reserve but donations are welcome and well deserved. You an take a picnic but there is a cafe onsite at various time. They do various talks, special walks and nature investigation sessions, check out their website for further details.

Even though this Summer day was overcast and we had 2 very noisy smalls with us I managed to spot a Hare, Dragonfly, various lovely birds and a group of dear running off into the woods.
I love the meadow setting left free to go wild under the whoosh,whoosh of the wind turbines; showing that even if people don't want to live near them nature isn't so fussy.

You'd not know it was Summer around here but we're not letting that stop us, Lucas loves this place as we can run round like a mad thing, although that doesn't help when looking for wildlife. 

When out on day trips lately we seem to pack for every weather prospect, I think our car boot contains coats, wellies, hats, macs, shorts,t-shirts and suncream.

It's always best to be prepared.

I hope you're finding lots of lovely activities to do during the holidays. Feel free to link your posts about them in the comments section below.

Love Amanda.x.

Maisie's Promise

This week Maisie officially became a Girl Guide entering at Rainbow level, she's been going every Monday during term time locally for about 8 months, and loves it. It gives her a different group of girls outside of school to interact with, which is really important to learn new skills and cooperation with others.

I'd always wanted to be a Girl Guide when I was little but no one did it in our area at the time, I joined the St.Johns Ambulance force and loved it.  Learning new skills(which could save a life), camping, crafting and I even met The Queen. I really wanted Maisie to be part of something like that and now she is.

She even has the badge to prove it.

 
At her Promise meeting all the newer girls stood in a circle and took turns to say the promise to the group, hers is "I will do my best to love my God and be kind and helpful" we did have a little sticking point with it has we don't really have a God. We don't practise any religion in our house choosing to let our children pick there own when older or choose not to. So Maisie was a bit unsure about this bit, she learns about religion at school so understood what they meant, but told me that when she said her promise she'd think about her family instead at that bit.
They received a small enamel badge for saying their promise, and also got 2 patches to celebrate The Diamond Jubilee and the Th Year of Rainbows.  They have been doing lots of Jubilee and birthday crafts at Rainbows the last few weeks to celebrate and I can't wait to add these to her others on her uniform. 

 

If you would like to learn more about Girl Guides click here their site has lots of useful information on how you can join in, and especially interesting is their report into girls attitude to role models.

Thanks for reading,
Amanda.x.

Longleat: Revenge of The Monkeys

Half term holidays over again, we loved Dorset so much last year we booked the same holiday house again to visit.  However this year the weather was against us again, but minus the snow and power cuts it worked out better than our other holiday this year.

Thankfully the holiday house had a swimming pool to drag (literally in my case) the children into when the weather was really bad.  

Also having been here before, we knew some places which were weather friendly. 

I love Longleat, you can use Tesco vouchers to get free passport tickets, and it has a great mixture of covered things to see and do for all ages. Although we did have some ticket issues they were quickly resolved, see Claire's post here for another take on this attraction.

This is my post from 2010 Day 1 and Day 2, quite a bit had changed since then. Much to Maisie disgust the teacups were no longer there, but everything else was and it's all been given a facelift to theme everything together in a Safari look. Previously the attractions all looked completely separate, I like that it all looks more cohesive now and can't wait to go back in a year or so when it's all completed.

I won't write everything again so feel free to look up my old posts. 

I loved seeing these guys really close up this time, you could almost here her purring over that bone.

Anne the Elephant came to give us a lovely welcome to, she doesn't always come outside as she's a little shy so this was a good treat. You can read her story here.

 So the last time we went the Monkey Enclosure was closed, but not this time. I will point out we have had our lovely car less than a month and although not brand new is still fairly shiny, the gates hanging with car parts were enough to put us off driving through. 

However Stu's Sister wanted to go with her kids as it was closed last time they came, and then Dave my Father-In-Law started to say how he wanted to see the kids looking excited at the monkeys close up. 

We were forced into it, we drove through...

This monkey owes me £8 which is the cost of a new antenna for my car, Maisie completely freaked out hearing the monkeys climbing on our roof; whereas Lucas was laughing like a loon. 

Ahh, however we were distracted from our car eating monkey by seeing, so close this lovely Mummy and her baby sitting on Claire's car in front.

As it then educated it's young in car chomping, beware the cute monkeys if you like your car. 

At this point it started to rain and there was no way we were putting the wipers on; we saw what they happened to other cars. 

We survived to go round the rest of the park though and had a great day.

What you been up to in the half term? 

Have you survived the monkeys?

Amanda.x.

Sea, sand and sickness

So for a few years now we've been taking holidays with family down south, however this year we went North instead and headed towards Northumberland.  It's not far to drive just over an hour and the beaches there are wonderful. We were staying in a grand and beautiful holiday house, they have to be quite big as it's for Sue & Dave(Mother/Father-in-Law) and their dog Fox, Claire and Lee(Sister/Brother-in-Law), their children Ben and Josh and their dog Bonnie and myself, Stu, Maisie and Lucas.

We were staying within a short drive/long walk with children from Cresswell beach, a shell finders haven, and after a week of beautiful weather I was hopeful it would continue throughout the week. 

Well how wrong was I, and the week had more in store than a bit of dodgy weather.

I'll leave the highlights for other posts but a quick run down of the week is 

Friday:
arrive to lovely house settle in, weather nice.

Saturday:
Alnwick Castle (Harry Potter day), weather nice, Barter Books, Ben get sickness bug.

Sunday:
Holy Island, pleasant weather, long walk, Lucas gets sickness bug.

Monday:
Cragside, beautiful weather and amazing place, long walks, great bridge, play the hat game :-)

Tuesday:
Farm park outing, it bloody snows, came home to 12 hour power cut, drink a lot by candle light.

Wednesday:
Claire gets sickness bug, Meal at Tree house at Alnwick, get call from solicitor to say house sale can complete, Stu and I have to drive home remove furniture from house and post keys into estate agents. Goodbye house. I start throwing up on way back, sickness bug gets me.

Thursday:
Sunny :-) Bamburgh Castle (amazing), picnic, surreal telephone call in Castle to sale house sale is completed. Onto the beach, everything is lovely. Maisie get sickness bug.

Friday:
Pack up, Stu complains of tummy aches :-( bug comes home with us.

All in all a strange and yet wonderful holiday, and in the next few posts I'll explain why.

Hope you had a great half term holiday

Amanda.x.

Watchtree - Winter

Watchtree is a local nature reserve, but one of those places that although I knew were it was I'd never actually been there.

It's always the way that you forget the beauty that's just on your doorstep.

During the Foot and Mouth crisis in 2001 Watchtree became the final resting place of many infected cattle, the site was chosen due to it's proximity to many infected farms, but also for its bedrock geology that would prevent further contamination from the buried cattle.

It's story could have just ended there, leaving the site a barren wasteland, however the ecological consultants assigned to the restoration of lands after the outbreak choose to turn the space into a community asset and a positive feature to local wildlife.

In 2003 Watchtree became a nature reserve, water areas were created with wildlife in mind, huge areas reseeded, 80,000 trees planted to enhance local woodland and create extra habitats.

They have educational programs for  school visits and run Watchtree Wheelers and cycle group for people with learning or physical disabilities. 
This amazing site is free to visit but has a donations box.

When we visited the site it was a cold frosty but clear Winters day, most of the ponds still had ice skimming the top of them. 

Maisie and Lucas enjoyed running around the wide open pathways of the site, trying to spot any wildlife which was unfortunately in hiding for us most the time. Maisie took to hiding in the wooded area while Lucas and I looked out for the Guffalo, of which we didn't see any.

We did however find this awesome wooden spider in the wooded area.

These insect holes are all over the site providing homes for little beasties, quite a lot had spiders in them when we were looking, and I think we may make some of these for our next garden project.

Maisie was map holder while we were there, she has her no one is listening to my command face on here, and took around the site to find the hides which look out onto various wetlands and feeding areas for birds. We saw a few sparrows, a finch and some ducks. The hides are very comfortable, with carpeted seating and one has a telescope too much to the children's delight. They all had posters inside to say which animals and birds were in that location.

The area is also the site for several wind turbines, I know that they get a lot of stick for being ugly and a blot on the landscape but I'll admit I find them hauntingly beautiful. Stood underneath one listening to it slow thrum thrum sound was a simple kind of peace and meditation.

I think will be regular visitors to this wonderful site, and hope to do another Spring time update. You can find out more about Watchtree Nature Reserve here.

Amanda.x.

Photographs courtesy of Stuart Ryan. 

The Blue Pool - Dorset

There are some places we visited in Dorset that need a special mention, so I'll do some separate posts on them, one of those is The Blue Pool and Tearooms in Wareham.

The tearooms have been open since 1935, the pool varies in colour sometimes green, sometimes blue, it's actually a huge clay bowl which has filled with rainwater.

The site has 25 acres of woodland surrounding the Pool full of various wildlife and flora. 

It was an amazing tranquil place, even with our 4 children and 2 dogs added to it.

They have trails for different abilities through the woodland, and a wildlife trail for he children. Hidden in the trees near markers were ceramic owls, red/grey squirrels and woodpeckers for them to spot, they were very hard to spot as we had some difficulty and only Ben(aged 6) completed the task, with the rest giving up to run through the woodland, Lucas was very excited just to find the markers.

I was amazed at every turn, finding smaller ponds teaming of frogs, fish, and dragonfly's, the latter were huge and a beautiful array of colours.

 Oh look can you see an Owl?

Entry to the site costs £5.30 per adult, £3.20 per child between 5-14 or £13.80 per family of 4, making it a very reasonable day trip out.

The park also boasts 3 play parks hidden in the woodlands, which even with my kamikaze son flinging himself from the roundabout, were a great addition to this old but glorious beauty spot.

Happy Holidays,

Amanda.x.