Weekend

It was a wet weekend, so we didn't get up to anything that exciting.  On Saturday Tom had football on the all weather pitch as the football field was flooded.  The all weather pitch wasn't that much better - the children were slipping and sliding all over the place. A good result was that football finished early, meaning we had enough time to get to Ribblehead and on to the Carlisle train.  We had a picnic on the train and arrived in good time for some train spotting for the boys and a good look around the cake shop for me.

Country gent & a very loud engine

We then hit the 'big city' and did our usual 'big city shopping' diving in and out of the rain.  We then had an early tea in one of our favourite Carlisle restaurants.  We visited 3 before we found one with some space - the people in Carlisle go out early!  We found space in the last one we tried, the atmosphere was completely different to that during the day: very loud music, quite dark etc.  We ordered our food ate up and left.  It wasn't exactly the best place to take a six year old - a little too adult!  Think next time we will have a late lunch rather than an early tea!

We got back to the station in time for more train spotting before heading home.

Remembrance Day at the War Memorial

Sunday was Remembrance Sunday.  Traditionally the Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorer Scouts go to church at St Mary's in the village for a service.  We think this was Tom's first ever time in a church and he was very very well behaved.  We had explained to him that it would be a solemn occasion and there would be a silent 2 minutes etc etc, he took it all on board.  He was sat on the front pew, whilst we were towards the back - trying (sometimes in vain) to follow the service and learn new hymns.  We went outside to the War Memorial for 11 o'clock - when it started raining - all the children were very well behaved again.  They read out all the names of the village's fallen men - we didn't recognise that many 'village' surnames but did notice a huge amount of them had double barrelled names.
 

Lots of water

When the service finished, we headed back home, got changed into something more comfortable (we dressed up for the church, to find everyone else in jeans!) and headed into Hawes for lunch at the Wensleydale Pantry and then up to Aysgarth Falls for a little walk and to see the water crashing over the waterfall.  Then back home to batten up the hatches and keep the awful weather at bay!

Wrapped up warm!