A Great Week

Well Zoe certainly seemed to enjoy herself. Whenever we asked her did you do ....(enter any particular activity here). She would look into the distance, smile and say "Oh yes! We did......... it was really fun/great!" etc...etc.
Here is Zoe after crawling through a muddy tunnel....



















And half way up (or down) the climbing wall....



































And all the bags waiting to come home...

No Zoe for a whole week!

Zoe is away on school trip this week to an adventure centre. She was really looking forward to it, so I hope that she enjoys it.
She will be doing caving, climbing, archery and other activities.

It is a bit of a weird situation though as she is away for four nights, and we aren't in contact with her. She can't even update this blog!
We have heard via somebody at the school that all the girls on the trip are fine.

We are thinking about her though. This morning Hannah said at breakfast that it was feeling strange without Zoe around.
xxx

Michael Jackson RIP

Michael Jackson died last week. It seems of a heart attack. There are various "conspiracy" stories circulating, but I suspect that he was an understood soul who died in rather sad and lonely circumstances.
The only reason that I mention it here is to include Hannah's perspective when she saw the story on the news.
She said... "Well he was 50, that is quite old. Not many people live to be 50".
Very reassuring. I am 47!

Oscar in the Garden!

We now let Oscar out into the garden for a little while every day. He is quite happy chasing anything that moves. Although Hannah finds it quite worrying. I think that she is worried that he will jump over the fence and out of her life!
Here are some photos and video clips.......

The Forest of Dean

We all had our first camping trip of the year over three nights at Whitemead in the Forest of Dean. Great weather meant that avoiding sunburn was a nice problem to have. We also find that now that the children are bigger means that there are more hands to help out with the jobs, which makes for a much easier trip all round. Although I am sure that I washed up more times than anybody else!
The children all get to sleep without any problems as well, which is a big improvement on trips when they were all much younger.

The campsite has a big tree in it, one of the branches of which makes for a good swing that the children use. I wasn't too happy with this at first as it looks a bit harsh on the poor tree, but the branch is worn smooth by the number of bottoms that have sat on it. So I thought that a few more wouldn't do much more harm. Here is a video clip of Hannah on the branch....



We had a good walk at a place called Symonds Yat. I am not sure about the linguistic history that the name comes from, but the place itself is a very deep ravine with the river Wye at the bottom of it. It looks very spectacular from the top.





























We walked down and got the passenger ferry across the river.




















The walk was about 3.5 miles, but this didn't take into account the steep climb down and subsequently back up again. This was quite long drag, but again everybody seemed to cope without too much complaint.

All in all a great trip.

Lingmoor Fell

Sunday 7th June:
The second day we went for a walk over Lingmoor Fell and back via the Langdale valley. Good weather and not too strenuous a route made for a good day.
Also Dave got to fly his kite! Here are a few photos...

A bit cold and wet......

Thanks for the message Zoe. We had a good day today.
We went for about a 9 mile walk. It was raining when we started, but was quite nice weather by the time that we had finished and got back to the car.

Below are some photos and a movie clip....... Yes, that is snow that you can see in the photo taken near the top of Helvellyn.

In case you can't hear, we are next to Red Tarn just below the summit of Helvellyn. I have been warmer!