Sunny Weekend

On Friday we got good news - he have had an offer accepted on a house in Ingleton.  We had been pushing to get the price down and managed to shave £12,500 off.  We thought the vendors were being really stubborn, but then a friend of Matt's found out that the original asking price for this house was £400,000 so we have in fact managed to get it for £87,500 under that.  We now think we have done good.  Here's a link to the house: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-25245433.html.  Now comes the hard work - trying to arrange a mortgage and get all the paperwork done...

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At last we had a decent weekend - the sun shone on both days, so we put it to good use and had an outside weekend.  Saturday we headed into the Lake District.  I had been planning for some time to go to Windermere which just happens to the location for the HQ of Lakeland (oh - that's why it's called Lakeland!!!) and therefore their biggest shop.  A voucher for £5 off had come through the door earlier in the week so I thought I would see if I could spend it.

It certainly was a huge store and I could easily spend A LOT of money in it, but I needed to spend £30 to get my £5 off and as I'm not earning at the moment, I couldn't really justify it.  However, I would be very happy to receive Lakeland vouchers in the future to spend there.  They also have a cafe, soft play area for children and wifi, music and headphone area for the men - well thought out so women can have time to themselves to shop, shop, shop - shame we found the play area at the end of our time there, but will keep that in mind for future visits.

View from Brockhole

We then headed off to Brockhole, the Lakeland Visitor Centre for a day out.  Didn't really know what to expect but plenty of people had recommended it to us.  It didn't start off well.  We headed to the adventure play area - full of slides, nets, climbing frames, zip wire, swings etc etc.  Tom had his 'wussie' head on and refused to play on anything - it is really hard when he gets like that: he says no to everything and moans and whinges about everything.  We managed to get him to have a couple of goes on some apparatus, but then gave up and headed to the cafe for lunch hoping that would sort him out.

Tom concentrating!

He did cheer up and ate up.  Matt went to fetch him his bike and fishing net and we explored the gardens.  Tom did really well on his bike - getting up some speed on the down hill bits, he also did quite a bit of fishing (mainly stones and leaves) in the lake.  When we got to the adventure play area again there was no stopping him - he tried pretty much everything and enjoyed himself.  Phew.  So in the end a good day.  The plan for the day was to end up in a restaurant in Ambleside, but Tom played so hard in the afternoon we didn't think he would have the stamina to have dinner in a good mood too, we were right, after about 10 minutes in the car on the way home he was fast asleep and remained so for a good hour.  We went to the Snooty Fox in Kirkby Lonsdale for dinner instead and had a really good slap up meal - so much so that we couldn't finish two adult meals between the 3 of us!

Sunday dawned an even brighter day.  We decided that today we would ALL go for a bike ride.  Tom tends to go slow on his bike because he is always waiting for us - our running skills aren't the best!  We have a bike carrier for the car, but it is very precarious and a right pain to put on and use.  A lot of swearing occurs whilst wrestling with it which is why we have been putting it off.  So, it was with a heavy heart that we got it out and attached it to the car, and then got out our bikes, dusted off the mould, pumped up the tyres heaved them onto the rack and set on our way (took over an hour!)  We headed off to Bull Beck just outside Caton - a car park near to a disussed railway path which is also a cycle path.

Tom was an absolute star and cycled really really well - when you consider how small his wheels are.  He has to pedal manically to keep up with us hardly pedalling at all.  I'm not sure how long he will have this bike for - he definitely needs bigger wheels.  We cycled to Crook O Lune which is another car park with a greasy spoon cafe serving bacon butties, sausage butties and burgers (which Tom demanded and ate up) We continued on down the cycle path across the river and then up an incline and down a hill,  as the terrain was getting harder, we decided to turn round and head back to the car.  This we did.  Tom kept going really well until about 400m from the end when he flagged, but the promise of a banana and a chocolate biscuit got him back.  All in all he did 3.8 miles - no mean feat when you've only just learnt to ride a bike and your bike wheels are tiny.  We were very proud.  As it was still very sunny we then hunted down a pub to have a drink and then headed home.  Once we got home we still couldn't bring ourselves to go inside so we went hunting for blackberries again - poor Tom had to climb the hill at the back of the house with us.  He did it with good humour though, didn't complain once.  He went to bed very very tired.

Here's a clip of Tom on his bike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcQKf2xEtOI&feature=plcp