A brass face, science and more.

This morning, M and I, before K was properly awake and up, left to go and see a man about a French horn and more specifically about teaching M to play one.  He was very friendly and chatty and happy that she hadn't picked up any bad habits by having a go on the various instruments that she has tried.  We talked about embouchure (from the French bouche - mouth) and he got M doing various things before giving her a horn and repeating them.  She can apparently make the right shape with her mouth and he told her that she has a 'brass face', which is clearly a good thing in this context.  We spent rather longer with him than I'd anticipated, about 3/4 hour, and K was just starting to get slightly concerned at how long we'd been, but very sensibly called my mobile to see where we were.  About 30 seconds from the front door as it happened!

As our visit to the brass teacher took a bit longer than anticipated, we were a bit later setting off to meet up with our friends than planned too.  We went to Woolsthorpe Manor, the birthplace and home of Isaac Newton.  It's not a particularly big place, so it was easy enough to find our friends, E, C, L & J who were in the Science Discovery Centre.  The Science Discovery Centre is not particularly big, but they manage to fit plenty into it, including the cafe, without it feeling cramped at all.  There are plenty of hands-on things to try and the volunteers in there were very good, both knowledgeable and approachable.  We spent time there both before and after going into the house.

We looked at the experiments that Isaac Newton had carried out about light.

Seeing the colours that make up white light in a film of soap.

The instructions and explanation!

We did a project about rainbows, but that was almost 2 years ago, so by now we can revisit some of the things we talked about then at a higher level.  There was interactive display, with buttons to press to shine white light through various prisms.

Shining white light through a prism.

The first part, explained that before Newton, people believed that white light was 'pure' light and that by passing it through a prism it was contaminated in some way. 

Shining red light through a second prism.

By shining light through a prism, then blocking out all but the red light and shining the red light through a second prism, he showed that the light was not contaminated, as only red light came out there too.

Shining white light through a prism and then through a lens.

Finally, by splitting white light with a prism and then passing the resulting rainbow through a lens, Newton showed that white light is made up of all the colours.

The guide gave us magnifying glasses and we saw that holding them at arms length the thing you are looking at is turned upside down.

Looking at the upside down farmhouse.

Projecting the image through the lens onto paper.

 We talked about the camera obscura we'd been into at Kentwell and how it is the same idea.

Reflecting the image onto the paper with a mirror.

E, C, L & J had watched the short video about Isaac Newton when they'd arrived, but C came and watched it again when K, M & I went to watch.

We also dropped balls that were the same size but different weights from a height and discovered that they hit the ground at the same time.  When we tried a feather and a ball at the same time though they didn't, so we talked about air resistance.

After a picnic lunch, we had a look in the orchard and then went into the house.  Second word of the day that we have come across that we have borrowed from the French, the parlour, in a house, gets its name from the French parler to talk.

The famous apple tree, with the house Newton was born in behind.

We had a look round and found that even though Newton was almost a century after Shakespeare, not much had changed when we compared the way they cooked with what we've seen at Mary Arden's Farm.

The fireplace in the Hall.

We went for a lovely walk afterwards, having asked and been given a map with a local short walk marked on it.  K used the map and decided which way to go to get where we wanted to go successfully and the children all particularly enjoyed the of the two playgrounds we stopped in en route.

K, L, C & M

By the time we got home it was pretty much time to get tea, as M has Brownies on a Monday, so they need to eat quite early.  While the girls were eating we had a look at a pull-out from The Times that my Mum had given me about grammar and punctuation.  K told me she had already looked at it and worked through the sections on passive and active sentences, conditional sentences and formal language and got most of the exercises correct.  That does seem to be K's way lately and she does seem to have a good grasp of things that she's looked at like this, although I think it probably helps to consolidate them if we go through them afterwards together.

Mothering Sunday

On Saturday afternoon we headed down to my parents', partly for Mothering Sunday and partly because A was doing a korfball refereeing thing on Sunday afternoon!

The girls and I went to church with Granny on Sunday morning, with Big Grandad singing in the choir.  Then we met A and my little brother, M who had driven Great Grandma (the girls' Great Grandma, that is, not mine!) at a local pub where we had a very nice lunch together.

4 generations of the maternal line.

After lunch M took Grandma home and then walked down to meet us with Emily, a dog who he sort of shares with a couple of friends of his, and the girls and I went for a walk through the local nature reserve with them and Granny to a playground.  On the way we spotted a couple of buzzards and a couple long-tailed tits and M told us that he's also seen kingfishers on the river there.  Then it was back for tea before heading home, all in all a lovely Mothering Sunday.

Flags and food.

We've had quite a quiet day today, although we've still got plenty done.  This morning M decided that the time had come to continue with learning flags and capital cities.  Despite not having done any of this for several weeks, she could still correctly name 100% of the European countries and capital cities when shown their flags.  Today we worked on the 12 South American countries and although not completely confident on all of them, she has managed to get all of them correct the majority of the time.  While we were doing this, K was continuing to work on her letter in response to one of the penfriend requests in Aquila. 

This afternoon we continued with both Roman Britain (which tied in nicely to some building work we're about to have done, which includes replaces rather old lead pipes, as it mentions that Romans used them too) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 

Finally, K & M, cooked tea for the family.  Under instruction and with some demonstration and a bit of help from me, they made bolognaise sauce and cooked pasta and prepared and cooked some veg to go with it.  I had to help with draining the spaghetti and veg, because they haven't got strong enough wrists to manage on their own and K in particular needs to move a bit faster at times, but all in all it was a very successful enterprise and one that I think we can build on.

A variety of literacy and other stuff.

We've had quite a lot of variety over the past couple of days of what would mostly come under the heading of literacy.  Yesterday morning the girls and I made a list of things to do for the rest of the week, before we head down to spend the weekend at my parents'.  It included quite a lot of reading of varying sorts.  M wanted 'Charlie Bone' to go on the list, as that's what she's reading to herself at the moment (she's started book 3 now).  K, unusually, hadn't got anything on the go, so I suggested a trip to the library for her and she came home with a Daisy book and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Atkin (I recognised the title and picked it up, although I'm not completely sure if I've actually read it!).  We also had on the list me reading to the girls, both starting a new fiction book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and starting on the next book of a boxed set of The Usborne History of Britain, Roman Britain (we read Prehistoric Britain a while back and then stalled somewhat).  Also on the list was letter writing, M decided to write letters to people during lent and K thought she might too, along with various chores and K & M cooking a meal and a few other things. 

Over yesterday and today, we've made quite a lot of headway with the list.  Yesterday, after our library trip, we came home and after lunch made a start of some of the reading.  I read several double pages of the Roman Britain book curled up on the sofa with the girls and then read the first three chapters of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, while K did some colouring and M played with Lego.  We looked briefly at when the book was first published, which was 1876 and related that to it being the Victorian period in this country.  We also talked briefly about slavery and the American Civil War and while K & M carried on with what they were doing (I did invite them to join me, but they were too busy), I did a bit of finding out on the computer.  I discovered that although the book was published post-Civil War, it was set (in the South) before it took place.  The girls had their weekly swimming lesson and I phoned up a local French horn teacher and arranged for M & me to go and see him next Monday.

Although neither of my girls write particularly regularly, they do occasionally and when they do it's usually for a specific reason that they see the point in, such as thank you letters or a script for a play, as K did recently.  Despite not doing very much writing, I have noticed that both girls' writing has improved in terms of their handwriting in particular, getting smaller and neater.  As far as spelling is concerned, both girls will ask occasionally me to spell a word they're not sure about and K will use a dictionary to check, if they show me what they've written they are often able to correct mistakes if I point them out.  Today, M did the longest piece of writing that she has ever done, I think.  She wrote over a side of a typical exercise book sized piece of paper in quite small, closely spaced lines in a letter to her Great Aunt M.  Rather frustratingly for me, I wasn't allowed to see it, but it's lovely to see her doing this.  She had decided to write letters to various people, mostly older relatives, during lent and this was her second one.  I think the reason it was so much longer than her first one, to Nana, was that, having recently got back from holiday, she had plenty to say in this one!  K didn't write a letter, but she did plan one, I think in response to one of the requests for penfriends in Aquila magazine, she has also been doing some logic puzzles in a brain teaser pull out that Granny kept from The Times for us.

Apart from that, M & I popped out, to print off a photo to put in with the letter (our printers not working at the moment, so we went to Boots to do that), buy stamps, post the letter and pop into the library.  Even though we spoke to a librarian, while the lady we spoke to yesterday was nearby, nothing was said about the conversation we had yesterday about leaving children on their own in the library.  We got some books out about slavery and the American Civil War, so that we can put The Adventures of Tom Sawyer into the context of when it was set and when it was written, although we won't be looking at them until we've finished reading the book, because that is what K & M have said they'd rather do.  We read some more of both Roman Britain and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and all three of us did some housework chores too.  K had Scouts this evening, so I took her to that, as A wasn't home until quite late having been away overnight again (there has been lately and will continue to be for the next month or so quite a lot of that unfortunately).

Independence for pre-teens and younger children.

This morning the girls and I went out to the library, and, as I often do I asked them if they wanted to come with me to do a bit of shopping or stay in the library.  We have done this frequently before, and indeed the girls occasionally go on their own to the library, and nobody has ever said anything before.  I have never asked permission or said anything to the librarians; it's never occurred to me to do so.  I am not expecting them to keep an eye on the girls, since I wouldn't be leaving them to stay on their own if I didn't think they were ready for that.

Today, however, one of the librarians, an older man we've not seen very often, overheard me talking to K about her staying there and came over and said that he didn't think that was allowed and that he would check.  He checked with one of the women at the desk, who didn't know either, but who knew us and agreed that she could stay today, although they both seemed concerned that the library was closing 40 minutes later and I wouldn't be back before it closed, even though the shops are only a 2 minute walk away.  They said that they would check with the manager who was coming in later that day.  The thing that really surprised me though, was that they both thought that the lower age limit for leaving a child alone at the library was 14!!

Clearly the age at which children are ready to go out on their own or be left alone, whether at home or somewhere like a library will vary.  I asked for people's thoughts on this on Facebook, among both HE and school families and there was, understandably, quite a range of responses to the question about what age they would leave a child for a short time at the library alone.  The vast majority said somewhere between 7 and 11, which seems reasonable to me.  I also asked what lower age limit for being left alone they thought a library would be likely to have.  In Oxfordshire libraries they say 8 years old is the youngest a child can be left alone, and a few others agreed, while quite a few more said that they thought secondary age would be reasonable.  I really hope that the librarians today were mistaken in their thought that children have to be at least 14 years old to be left on their own in the library, although I'm not planning on changing what we do to be honest.  Whether my girls will still be comfortable staying on their own at the library now, if their age limit is 14, though remains to be seen, as sometimes they can be real sticklers for rules.

I am feeling more and more strongly that children need some freedom at a relatively young age, and it seems to be a lot harder to allow them that freedom and for them to get it than when I was a child.  I grew up in a rural area, on the edge of a small town and had a lot of freedom to disappear off with one or both of my brothers for, not all day as some people my age and older talk about, but certainly a couple of hours at a time, at the age my girls are now, 8 & 10.  My girls are allowed to the shops, the library or the park on their own or as a pair, my main safety concern is traffic and those places are accessible with just a few very quiet roads to cross or a zebra crossing.  I can't help but think that children who have little or no freedom until they are teenagers, when there surely inevitably must come a point that they fairly suddenly have an awful lot of it, will find it much more difficult to handle that freedom, than those who have gradually have got used to being responsible for themselves at a younger age.  Society seems to have become so risk averse regarding children, that for those of us trying to give our children what they want and need (expressly and vocally so in the case of my younger daughter just under a year ago), it can be really quite tricky, whether due to restrictions imposed by places they may wish to go, by our concerns about what others may think or due to increased concerns about the dangers younger children face when out and about alone, whether those concerns are real or perceived.  I for one, however, think that the welfare of my children is about much more than protecting them from risks, I think it is about helping them learn how to deal with these risks on their own and allowing them the opportunity to do so.

A poorly day and some catch up.

I forgot to mention as well as the preparation for their production of Pyramus and Thisbe, K, M & C also found time to put on another little play.  They used the face paints that C had brought with her to paint the characters on their hands and made up a story about a girl, a spider and four aliens.  The green alien was a baddy who was trying to take over the universe and had two of the other aliens under an enchantment, unfortunately for him, him was scared of spiders, so it all worked out in the end, the enchantment was broken, the girl married an alien, with the spider for a bridesmaid and an alien for a priest!

The caption.

 After a very busy holiday, the excitement of the sleepover and the business of putting on a play, I thought that M was just overtired when told me she wasn't feeling very well.  It seems that C wasn't feeling too well either and both of them had a sore throat and grottiness, so it more than just being exhausted.  M spent the vast majority of the day snuggled up on the sofa, either reading to herself, with me reading to her and K (we've finally finished the Gemma series by Noel Streatfeild) or watching telly or dvds (David Attenborough and Bagpuss - separately!). 

On book 2 of the Charlie Bone series.

I popped out to take K to her piano lesson and do a bit of shopping while she was there, while M watched David Attenborough.  By this evening, M was feeling better enough to want to go to korfball, but still grotty enough to moan only half-heartedly at not getting to go.

A sleepover and a play.

After we got back from our holiday on Saturday afternoon, K spent quite a lot of time shut away with a t-shirt and fabric paint and she continued on Sunday.  On Sunday afternoon, C arrived for the girls' first proper sleepover.  From that point on, we hardly saw the three girls apart from for meals!  As I understand it they spent much of the time continuing the preparation that had started a fortnight ago at the Asfordby HE group.  We had an agreement that a not-midnight feast was allowed, as long as teeth were brushed again afterwards and they had it at quarter to ten.  They didn't settle down ridiculously late, thanks mostly to C, I think.

After an early lunch we headed over to Asfordby, where M in particular was very impatient to find out if Z was going to be there.  The secret planning that was begun at the last one between K, M, C & Z was ready to be revealed.  They had written the script, cast the play, learned their parts, decided on and in some cases designed the costumes for their version of Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within a play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Z was Pyramus, C was Thisbe, M played the wall and the moon and K was the narrator and operated the lion (a lion blanket).

There is a stage in the hall, so with help from others we cleared a space on it and put out some chairs.  At K's request I asked people to be quiet and warned them that there were some deaths in the play, so if they minded they might want to leave.  It was a bit noisy (there are quiet a lot of toddlers and younger children), so a bit tricky to hear, but all four of them had clearly learned their parts really well.  It finished with the line "And they all lived happily ever after, except Pyramus and Thisbe.  The End." and then they took their bow.

Thisbe (C), Pyramus (Z), the Wall and Moon (M) and the narrator (K) with lion.

The 'wall' t-shirt that K spent hours painting.

There have been times in the past when there has been a lot of talking about putting on plays (usually the whole of the Harry Potter series!), so it's been really good to see them coming up with an idea, working on it in lots of different ways and getting all the way through to the production and performing it.

The last (holi)day - Longleat Safari park.

You have to be out of your accommodation by 10 o'clock on the morning of your departure, so we had a plan that we would pack up the car, leave it in the car park and cycle to Longleat Safari Park on the Friday.  This worked really well, except that when we got to the entrance and showed the girls' Blue Peter badges we discovered that they are only valid with an adult paying full entrance price and since we'd booked A & my tickets through Center Parcs at a 30% discount we had to pay for the girls.  It does tell you this on their website if you search, but unfortunately we hadn't, so we ended up having to pay for the girls at almost full price (the lady did charge us the online price which is 15% cheaper than the turn up and pay price).  Next time we'll know that it works out cheaper to pay full whack for A & me and get the girls in free.  Ho hum.

After paying, we were faced with the drive to the house and safari park.  On bikes it is really good fun as it's really rather steep in places and almost entirely downhill.  We locked our bikes up and went to book tickets for the bus around the safari park.  The bus was due soon after, so we went and waited at the stop and were soon heading towards the animals.

Wallabies.

Ring-tailed lemurs.

An obligatory 'booboo' photo.

Giraffes.

Tapirs.

Rhesus macaque monkeys.

 The monkeys, sheltering from the brief shower of rain, demonstrated their camouflage rather well!

White rhino.

 White being a misnomer, due a mistranslation of 'weit' meaning wide and referring to their mouths!

Anne, the elephant.

A rescued circus elephant, she has severe arthritis in her back legs due to the tricks she was made to perform, so is kept on sand so she doesn't hurt herself because she drags her hind legs when she walks.

Siberian tiger.

Two of the smaller of the two prides of lions.

Three of the larger pride looking through to the others.

 The lions here still exhibit territorial behaviour, as the two prides are in neighbouring areas.

Some of the cubs playing.

Driving through the lion enclosure, K commented "I can see its penis!, which caused some amusement.

Cheetah.

Wolf.

After the bus dropped us off, we found a picnic table, had some lunch and discussed our priorities for things to see in the afternoon.  We were unanimous in wanting to see the Batcave, so we headed there first.

They were Egyptian fruit bats and while not enormous, they were certainly bigger than the bats we saw on our batwalk in the autumn.  We learned that if you see a bat hanging the 'right way up' then if you are standing underneath it you really should move, since that means it's about to wee or poo!

When we came out of the Batcave the girls wanted to go into the 'mirror maze'.  When we emerged from there it was raining a bit, so we headed for the house, but when it came to going in, K decided she really didn't want to, because she 'might see horrible things' (by which she generally means paintings depicting people getting hurt or killed, which you do see quite frequently in stately homes).  So she stayed outside and ran up and down 600 steps while A, M & I were inside!  As it happened there were very few 'horrible things', but she was happy and the rain had stopped, so she didn't get wet either.

We had agreed that we would like to go on the boat trip and see the penguins before we needed to head back to our bikes.  M in particular would have liked to go in the big hedge maze, but we didn't have time for that as well unfortunately.  We saw more smaller animals on the way to the boat.

Meetkats.

Mara.

 The main attractions to see on the boat trip are hippos, gorillas and sealions.  Unfortunately the hippos were hiding, but we did see the other two.

Gorillas - I think it was eating bark!

One of the sealions.

 On the way to the penguins, we passed some very cute and nippy little monkeys.

I think they're marmosets, I couldn't see the sign!

The penguins were great.  The ones we met outside clearly enjoy interacting with the visitors, as they are completely free to come and go as they please (you can see the penguins size and shape holes in the fence) and talking to the keeper there, some of them come out every day.  Up close you can see their feathers, which are really small and densely packed.

M & a penguin.

Both girls and the same penguin!

We just had time to walk through and aviary with some stunning birds in on the way back to our bikes.

Rainbow lorikeets.

And peek in at some ferrets.

Then the ride back up the drive began, although it was so steep that for the vast majority of the way it was a push back up the drive.  The bit from the entrance to Longleat back to Center Parcs was fun though, as that had been a relatively gentle uphill on a path through the edge of a wood and was now obviously downhill.

Once back in the carpark, it was a question of loading the bikes back up and driving about 40 minutes or so to A's cousin and family, where we were staying the night.  They have a nearly 5 year old girl, F, who was about 16 months old last time we saw them and a just about to turn 2 year old boy, G, who we met for the first time.  He was very funny and, having taken a shine to A, insisted on 'Anna' blowing on his food when it was too hot!  The girls all got on really well and disappeared to play happily by themselves in F's room.

We said goodbye to them on Saturday morning, after F had gone off for her dancing and drama class with her dad, and headed home stopping for a very nice meal in a random pub en route.  We got home mid-afternoon and started on the washing, while K & M got busy with preparations for something they're planning for the HE group we go to on Monday and got excited because they are having their very first 'proper' sleepover tonight.

An action-packed holiday - very picture heavy.

Yesterday we got back from a fun, if rather tiring, holiday at Center Parcs Longleat.  Last time we went to one, it was the local to us, Sherwood Forest, when the girls were really rather small.  M was still a toddler then, so it was very different in terms of the activities that we did.

Last time we hired a bike with a trailer when we got there, this time we just about managed to take all of ours with us.

3 on the carrier and M's balanced on top of our stuff in the boot!

We stopped overnight at my parents' on the way down, so we arrived very soon after lunch on the Monday and unloaded the bikes.  We had a bit of an explore on our bikes until we were allowed into the accommodation.  Then we unpacked as much as we needed to and headed for the pool.  We all enjoyed the various slides, with the 'wild water rapids' being by far the favourite.  K & M are both pretty strong swimmers now (certainly better than me!), so they could disappear off and explore, once we'd established where to wait if they needed us.

On Tuesday morning we went out for another bike ride and discovered some very steep paths!  K, M & A managed to cycle up most of them, but I must admit I got off and pushed occasionally.  We headed back to our cabin when it started to rain a bit and played Rummikub before lunch.

One Tuesday afternoon M & A had booked to do the 'Leap of Faith', which involved climbing very high things.  K & I followed a while later to watch them, we missed the first thing and M doing the actual leap, but saw A having his turn.  They had to climb a pole of around 30 feet, get themselves onto the tiny platform on top, stand up and then leap and try to grab a trapeze.

The leap!

M had had a really good go at it, but her shorter arms meant that she didn't quite make it, but she did enjoy it.  A managed it, despite finding it really rather scary!  The final thing was another very tall pole, with a slightly bigger platform, which A climbed first and then, once he was standing on top, M followed.

They then had to hold hands and lean backwards, before each turning round (no mean feat on that tiny platform!) and then hold hands again and lean forward.

Like this!

Then they jumped off and were lowered to the ground.

That's usually all for that activity, but since there were only half a dozen of them taking part, they got through it much quicker than normal, so they had time to walk round the lake and have a go on the Aerial Adventure (something that all four of us had planned for another day).

M was completely unphased and made short work of it.

 

Waiting for Daddy to catch up!

 It finished with a 200 meter long zip wire over the lake.

Afterwards we headed back and got out another of the games we'd taken with us, this time Monopoly.

Wednesday we had an awful lot packed in.  First K, M & I did climbing and abseiling.  In our group there was us and a group of about half a dozen children and teens from a special school.  The range of ability in terms of the climbing was very big, but with a lot of encouragement (and in one case bribery using mints!) everybody had at least one go at abseiling, either by going up the climbing wall or by climbing the ladder inside.

M & me on the climbing wall.

K & M.

M went up the more difficult side first and got about 2/3 of the way up with no problem.  She got a bit stuck at that point though and did want to come down, but with a bit of encouragement she made it to the top.  K was on the easier side and made it up too.  On the second go, they stuck to the same sides (mostly at K's insistence) and K got up again, but M cricked her ankle and had to come back down.  She recovered pretty quickly though and made it up to the top on the easier side afterwards.  K was, I think, a bit tired by her last attempt and came down after making it about half way up.  I was very pleased with myself, managing to get up both sides, although I did find the first bit of the abseiling impossible to manage without squeaking rather loudly!

While we were climbing, A had gone for a massage and then joined us in time to take some photos, before we went to get ourselves some lunch.  After lunch, K & I went to do field archery, while M & A went to the pool.  We got chatting to another of the people doing the archery while we were waiting for it to start and had a small world moment, when we found out that he grew up in Stratford-on-Avon and his niece and nephew go to the school that I went to.  When we found out that we were both going to be around there for Mothering Sunday, K suggested we could meet up, but agreed that we probably wouldn't have time, as we'd each be spending time with our own families!  When we found out that the targets in the wood that we were to be shooting at were in the shape of animals, I should have predicted what happened next.  It certainly didn't surprise me.  K refused to shoot at the targets, but she was happy to aim for tree stumps instead and enjoyed herself anyway!  The other folks were slightly bemused, but perfectly accepting of this decision of hers, which she was entirely comfortable with and confident in.

K in action.

A & M met us at the end of the archery and A whisked the girls off to the next activity, which was the three of them going horse-riding.  Being extremely allergic to horses, I took the opportunity to go for a massage myself and made sure I didn't get back until the girls and A had had a chance to shower and change and pack away the clothes they'd worn for riding.  By the time I got back A & M were having a game of Carcassonne, while K was playing a made up game of patience using Happy Families cards.

Our final full day there, we had booked K & M in for 'Canoe Capers' and it turned out that it was just the two of them.  They got togged up in wetsuits and had the brief safety talk.

The instructor got them doing all sorts of things, such as sitting right at the front of the boat and paddling, then right at the back.

He also got them standing up, paddling standing up, swapping canoes, sharing a canoe for a while.

Swapping canoes.

They even occasionally paddled in time!

They were told that if they could stay upright, standing at the front of the canoe for five seconds, then they'd win a hot chocolate from the instructor, which they did.  He told us afterwards that he hadn't expected them to manage that, as most people fall in!  For the last 15 minutes or so, they swapped boats and all three of them went out in a 'katacanoe'.  The girls really enjoyed it and apparently got the hang of it really quickly for a first attempt.

Coming back in to shore at the end.

We had planned to take the girls for a hot chocolate to warm up afterwards, but since they were each given one, we only had to buy them for A & me!  Then the four of us got kitted up again to do what M & A had already had a go at the Aerial Adventure.

K & M clearly enjoyed it, but I don't think I'd use that word for myself.  I'm really glad I did it and would probably have another go another time, but it's more a sense of achievement that enjoyment that I experienced.  I really did not like the sensation of the trees we were up swaying in the wind.  The final zip wire was fun though and not scary, unlike the abseiling, because you just sat down into the harness and at no point was there the brief feeling of falling.

We had our planned eating out meal after the Aerial Adventure, at the Pancake House, which was rather tasty.  While there we watched the birds that came to the bird feeder that was just outside the window where we were sitting.

After lunch we went to the pool for the last time and saw some of the people we'd done the climbing and abseiling with and had a brief chat with one of the girls.  Then it was time to head back and pack as much as we could, in order to get an early start in the morning.

Finally, some pictures of the local wildlife that we spotted.

Visitors to our back door!

A rabbit just outside the front door.

Some ducks we spotted while the girls were canoeing.

Lots of greenfinches on the feeder at The Pancake House.

Female and male.