Bank Holiday Weekend

Saturday

Was a very horrible, blustery and rainy day.  A day for being inside.  However, it was Fred and Frank's army party today which was taking place outside.  Oh hum, as usual it was the adults who minded more than the kids.  Enjoy-a-Ball Paul was there so the kids had fun.  They all came in for their mess and with the weather getting worse and worse they didn't go out again.  Poor Caroline and Rob's extension is only just finished and they had 20 plus children in there causing trouble.  Oh well, there were good spirits all round and the children enjoyed themselves.

We were wondering what to do and decided it would be nice to go to a pub, and then we suddenly thought that the Old Post Office would be open - ah ha!  We hadn't been fed, so that meant we could go and try out their platters.  Fantastic.  We headed over there and found it empty.  I had a Mediterranean platter and Matt the fish platter - both were excellent, however, Tom still managed to find some room to 'help' us out.  Fantastic!  We then went home and watched a film as it was still a revolting day!

Sunday

Trying to figure out Morris Dancing

We had found out in the local paper that Skipton has a waterways festival this weekend - the canal goes straight through its centre.  This year the theme was nursery rhymes and as that is this half term's topic for Tom at school, we thought it would be a good idea to go along.  The weather still wasn't great, but it was due to clear so we headed over.  We parked at the nominated car park and got a vintage Route master number 9 down to the town, which was fab as we got the best seats in the house.  We had a quick look around the farmers' market and headed through the main bit in search of a pub for lunch.  We ended up going to one called 'The Narrow Boat' very apt don't you think?  It was a proper real ale pub, children were only allowed in if they were eating a proper lunch with adults.  Not a problem - Tom was hungry.  Wow, it was a good food pub as well, they had lots of light bites, which were smaller versions of their main courses and just the right portion for a lunch.  The boys had fish and chips and I had risotto.  We were all happy and we all ate up.  This pub was also home to a troop of Morris dancers so we were treated to lots of jingly bells as they walked around.

Decorated boats

Once fed we headed back to the main canal area to see what was on.  The Morris dancers had got there first and were dancing.  Tom was interested and made his way to the front of the crowd.  They held his interest big time, in fact we stayed to watch the full performance.  They weren't even particularly good, but were obviously having a good time.  Next on the schedule was the raft race.  There were cash prizes for the first 3 teams, but only 2 entered, and one of those was the Morris dancers!  Next time we should take a boat with us would be an easy win!  We looked around the boats, some had been decorated really well with nursery rhyme themed items, although many of the nursery rhymes were old ones that Tom didn't know: Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Little Miss Muffet,  The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, etc etc (not, I hasten to add through lack of me reciting them to him as I did many many many times when he was a non listening toddler!)  Tom then had a go on a huge bouncy slide before we got the vintage bus back to the car park.

As the sun had come out and the countryside was looking good and it wasn't too late, we decided to head to Malham on the way home.  We got there just in time to ask at the tourist office about the walk to Janet's Foss.  The lady pointed us in the right direction and off we went.  It was a pleasant walk, alongside a river ending up in a lovely waterfall.  A very pleasant end to the day.

Monday

Bus stop scarecrow

About to be devoured

Bank Holiday Monday and it wasn't raining - hurray.  We had decided to go to Wray for the scarecrow festival.  We had a great time.  The scarecrows were looking good - almost one in every house in the village.  Also there was a big fair and fun fair which meant we had a busy day.  As Wray is quite close to Ingleton we 'bumped' into a number of people we knew.  First of all we saw Judith from Smile Nursery who recognised us and Tom immediately.  Not only that, but she remembered everything about us: my cake business, our link with Japan, Tom's friends at nursery.  I was very impressed as it has been almost 2 years now since he was there.

Naughty Kristoph

We also bumped into Miss Swindlehurst who was very good, taking time to talk to Tom considering it was her day off, also some other friends from his class.  We later found out that we missed quite a few more of our friends.  Tom had a couple of goes on some attractions in the fun fair, we spent some time watching some things going on in the main field - including a pipe band where Tom really got into the drumming and some birds of prey do their stuff, but their star attraction, a Russian Steppe Eagle called Kristoph, decided to fly off rather than do his party tricks, bringing a quick end to the performance.  Tom also saw a magic show before we decided we had had enough and returned back home.  It was a good day out and it didn't rain - hurray!