A week of Pinky Ponks, school sports day and a walk in the park in the rain

Monday 26^th May

A week of Pinky Ponks, school sports day and a walk in the park in the rain

A very busy week with limited vigorous exercise, in fact limited to a 7 mile off road run and a 32 mile cycle ride over Rock hill to North Curry and back over Slough Green.

Two days of Bikeability was followed by a very hot morning at school sports day, helping with netball for the KS1 youngsters, a little bending of the rules needed at times for the ones who were not so tall! We were very lucky with the weather.

Thursday and Friday saw us heading up the M5 to Gloucester for two days of Grand daughter entertaining – which started with a bus ride into Gloucester and much walking round the Docks, swan and duck spotting, the bus pass certainly came into its own. Gloucester Docks is well worth a visit, sympathetically restored with fantastic warehouses converted into a variety of uses. We managed to get home just as the heavens opened and terrific thunder and lightning. I think Gdaughter enjoyed the bus, and certainly made lots of friends in the duck and swan world.

We stayed the night at ‘Brierfields’ campsite in the van, very comfortable, but very busy with a caravan rally. A well positioned site with reasonable facilities now they have added a couple more showers.

Friday saw us fitting a car seat in the van, instructions to fit clearly written in language designed for a post graduate trainee car seat fitter! A drive to Cheltenham in the rain followed by much stopping and starting whilst queuing in traffic trying to find Pittville Park – 50 mins later for a 19 min journey [says Google maps] we drove into the free car park!! Yes free. With the rain still falling, it was a dash to the nearest café, coffee and chocolate Brownie, whilst GD was entertained by a local brown spaniel repeatedly chasing a thrown ball.

We managed to set off to find the swings GD deciding that every puddle needed the GD depth test, good job we had wellies!!!. A visit to the various rides, swings, slide, climbing frame and train before we managed to persuade GD that the rabbits and birds in the aviary were really worth seeing. The rain continued to pour down GD suitably impressed with rabbits and the bright yellow canaries we finally got back to the van very wet. Pittville park was excellent and well worth a visit, It was home via ASDA, GD had a great time dodging shoppers and taking stuff off shelves we didn’t need. Finally home and ‘In the nite garden’ complete with ‘Tombiloos’, ‘Pinky Ponk and ‘Upsy Daisy’ before a very tired GD went up stairs to bed, Grand parents were also very tired!!!

The drive home on the Friday evening before bank holiday was not a good idea the normal 1.5 hr trip turned into 2.25 hrs with queues all the way down the M5.

It was then we heard that our eldest son was in hospital after a piece of metal decided to enter his hand in an accident at home – so our Saturday was already sorted with a trip to Poole Hospital! Fortunately he was OK after an operation to remove it was successful. However he had to stay in till Monday so they could repair the tendons in one finger. Hey Ho! what a week of contrasts!!