Family bike ride

Although Tom is tired and got a cold, he doesn't let it get him down (although he does get naughty and bolshy when he is tired which can be annoying).  This morning he requested that he went on a bike ride : "all of us on a bike".  Expecting lots of rain, we got up and set to putting the bike rack on the car - a nasty job which involves lots of grunting and swearing.  It didn't take as long as usual to get it on and the bikes on it.  Luckily we can still get Tom's bike in the car - that will change when he grows into his next one.

On the bridge at Crook O' Lune

We all had a good breakfast and then headed out.  Initially we were going to hit the prom at Morecambe, but we were worried about the weather - supposed to get windy and rainy today and there is no shelter in Morecambe, so we decided to ride along an old railway track: Bull Beck to Crook O' Lune.  We have done this before when Tom was on his orange bike, it took quite a while and Matt and I were wobbling quite a bit as we were having to cycle so slowly.  This time it was quite different.  Matt and I had to cycle properly to keep up with Tom and we got to Crook O' Lune in about 15 minutes - last time it was more like an hour!  We were very surprised and decided to carry on which we did.  We got all the way to the M6 road bridge, past Halton which is a decent distance.  We wondered if we should continue on into Lancaster but Tom requested we headed home, and as he isn't 100% we figured he knew best.

Resting at Crook O' Lune

We stopped off at Crook O' Lune on the way back for tea and a bun and then returned to the car.  In all we cycled just under 6 3/4 miles in 1hr 10mins (Matt of course has a gadget that measures all this!).  Very impressive for a tired, cold ridden 4 year old, we were very impressed with him (I was impressed with me too!)  It was very enjoyable and we found some free car parks on the route nearer to Lancaster, so we made a note to return to these and see if we can cycle into Lancaster next time where they have cycle paths alongside the canal which are supposed to be nice)

We headed to a new farm shop / cafe in Ireby just along from Ingleton.  We were surprised to come across a huge wooden building with loads of seating.  We had a lovely lunch (a little pricey but it was very good quality so can't really complain) and then headed back home.

In the afternoon we did a quick walk around the village, (old Neptis is being done up to become a new cafe....) visited the butchers to buy 2 massive rump steaks for dinner (so big that we ate one between the 3 of us and froze the other - very nice it was too), and headed down to the park for a play.  All was going well until I sat on a wall.  I didn't notice the wasp already sat on the wall - he wasn't happy with me and stung me in anger.  I was angry too - and sore!

I hobbled home, then we had a lazy afternoon before dinner and a very early bath time for a very tired, very grumpy and quite naughty boy.

Tom had a good sleep last night and woke up much happier.  The weather today was forecasted to be atrocious so we decided to have an easy day.  We headed out to Colne via the Forest of Bowland (not sure why it is called 'Forest' as we saw very few trees.  It was a lovely drive through upland moorlands - we didn't see another car for the whole journey.  Very sparsely populated, but very beautiful landscape.  It wasn't a fast route by any means, but very interesting.  We arrived in Colne to visit Boundary Mills - a huge outlet store - which serves free coffee and croissants on a Sunday morning (half of Lancashire was there).  We did a bit of Christmas shopping, I got some cake things and then we headed to Asda for some more shopping and lunch.

We then headed home via the fast, boring route.  Tom fell asleep which was the whole purpose of the trip - he was in dire need of an afternoon nap.  We then had a useful afternoon - cleaning, tidying, sorting etc (always needed in our house!)