Still hot, but happy.

We had to stay in today because someone was coming to fix our boiler, so it was somewhat unwise, given the unlikelihood of managing to meet up with them, that I told K & M about the email saying that friends were going to be at our local country park this afternoon.

This morning M & I picked strawberries (lots), raspberries (some) and blackcurrants (a few).  We also discovered that a couple more of the holes in M's bee hotel have been blocked up.  It's not very clear in the photo, but the two top right ones have now been sealed too.

Meanwhile, K read the only one of the Maths Quest books that she hadn't already read, The Cavern of Clues, which is the one with calculations as the theme for the questions.  She said that she enjoyed it and got most of the questions right, although there was one that she didn't understand the question at all.  I wasn't in a position to look at it with her at the time, but we agreed that we'll go back to it another time.

K & M popped to the shop for some bits and K went out a little later to get the sunglasses that had arrived already, and happily the man arrived to fix the boiler at about midday.  M went to ask him how long he was likely to take and was very pleased to hear that he thought it wouldn't take too long, so we did manage to head to the country park in time to at least have a chance of finding our friends.  Unfortunately as they don't have a mobile it was a case of looking for them in the rather large park!  We had a lovely walk, but sadly didn't find them and later found out that they'd left earlier than planned because it had got too hot, something I entirely understand!  We ended up, after looking in all the likely places, with M & I playing butterfly pairs, on the big wooden butterfly that has rotating discs with photos of different species on one side.  Then we spent some time in the sensory garden, which was nice and shady under the trees.

M and I had a go at the labyrinth race.  You start with the ball in the middle and tilt the labyrinth moving it round until it gets back to where it started.

Labyrinth.

M & I had a talk through the speaking tube.

M managed this in 16 moves, just one more than the minimum needed.  You have to move the stack from the left to the far right space, moving only one pan at a time and never having a larger pan on top of a smaller one.

There are a few new things since we were last there, including several tessellation pictures and an optical illusion area.  Mostly there are pictures that can be seen in a couple of different ways or with hidden things within the image, but there was also this very clever carving.

Before we left we had a go on a few of the musical instruments that they have there.

Once we got home I read a few more chapters of Charlie Bone, before we had some tea and then went to pick more cherries.  There are still plenty and we took some to some friends, before returning and filling two big tubs.  There are still plenty more that aren't quite ripe yet and loads that are already perfect but out of reach even with the step ladder.  K went to the library first though and has signed up for the summer reading challenge and asked them to get The Railway Children in for us.