Weekend in Chester

Saturday morning found us up early and back to the school fields for football - the last practise before their first proper competitive match next week.  Tom did ok, but he refuses to tackle which is going to be a problem - if he doesn't tackle, we won't get the ball!  Oh hum, he had fun though which is the point.

Straight after football we headed down to Chester as Matt was heading off to see a gig with Cameron in the evening.  We headed straight down the M6 to a retail park in Preston to get Tom some bigger and better shin pads for football (with ankle protectors as he got kicked in the ankle the other day and there were tears for quite some time!).  We found some and then looked for a cafe for lunch.  We thought we would steer clear of all the fast food joints and tried out a cafe in an outdoors store.  We should have gone to the fast food outlets - I did ok with a jacket potato, but both Tom and Matt ordered a pancake with sausage and got just that - a dry, tough pancake with a sausage in it - no sauce, no extras, just that - both struggled to eat it, with good reason.  Oh hum, so much for trying an independent...

We headed on down to Chester and were welcomed by 3 girls.  The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, Tom racing around with the girls and lots of gin, tonic and wine.  Tom got introduced to Strictly Come Dancing and was dancing around madly with the others.  They didn't go to bed until after 9pm. then there was a lot of messing around until Lisa read them the riot act - when all went quiet.  We didn't hear from them again.  Lisa and I then carried on drinking wine until midnight when we went to bed.  Matt didn't roll in until after 1am (what a dirty stop out).  He was quiet inebriated so fell into bed.  Considering the amount of alcohol we both consumed, we slept quite well, just not for long enough.

Ice Cream Tree

Tractor driver Tom

We had breakfast at John Lloyd where the girls were having tennis lessons.  We slowly came too and said our goodbyes before heading over to the ice cream farm to meet with Jude and Craig.  Now we have been to the ice cream farm before when we were living in Telford, but it has changed massively.

Being silly in a wheelbarrow

We couldn't quite believe our eyes.  There was a huge ice cream tree in the middle of a new complex (which blows out snow and ice every half hour), a huge ice cream parlour (which we didn't visit as Tom doesn't really like ice cream), an indoor sandpit and water play area (which we also didn't enter), crazy golf, go karts, and a farm amongst other things.  It is free to enter but then you have to pay for most of the attractions.  It was pretty crowded, so we headed to the farm which was a little less manic and met up with Jude and Craig there.  They were also a little jaded, having been to a wedding the night before.  We decided the best thing for us to do would be to go to the cafe for lunch.  So, 3 coronation baguettes, a children's meal and a chicken sandwich later we were all feeling a little better.  Jude and Craig went home whilst we stayed for a round of crazy golf.  We then headed home.