Holidays - Week 2

Hard work - but they got it to the end of the walk in one piece!

Tuesday: after a very quiet morning, I headed to Settle for 10am to pick up Tom.  He wasn't totally overjoyed to see me and started whinging and whining as soon as I told him we were going for a walk.  I think he really enjoyed his time with Grannie and Grandpa and didn't want to be back under our care again.  Oh hum.  His bad mood didn't last for long as we were meeting up with Eli and Adam for a walk around Oxenber Woods and lunch in Feizor.  After about 5 mins both boys warmed up and were playing really nicely with each other whilst Eli and I caught up.  She hadn't heard about my 'big adventure' this year but she did know about Tom's broken arm!  We had a really good day.  Adam and Tom found a big branch half way round and worked together to carry it around the other half of the walk.  Not a bad feat when Tom only has one arm.  Although it looked like it was going to rain for the whole day, it didn't, so we were very happy when we got back to our cars dry.  A good day out.

Tom found a yellow submarine Hot Wheels car!

Wednesday: we took the car back to Morecambe to get its replacement air conditioning pipes.  They gave us a courtesy car.  I gave Tom the choice to go to Lancaster or Morecambe.  He decided on Morecambe.  It wasn't as nice as last week and very very very windy.  My plan was to walk down the prom to a funky restaurant at the end of it - but I seriously thought Tom was going to get blown over, so we decided to call it a day and headed into a crappy pub instead for very average food.  Oh hum, at least it was cheap!  We then did some shopping for snacks for Thursday and then went to the amusements again and spent a very very very very long time trying to spend our £1 of 2ps.  Overtime we got to the last coin we would win big!  Think it took us over 45 minutes to loose it all.

We walked back to the car and headed back to the car dealership in the hope that car would be ready, we were in luck, picked up the car and headed home.  Not the most exciting of days, but necessary.

Shaping it

Cutting the candy

Thursday was my birthday treat - a day trip to Beamish with Bibby's of Ingleton.  I had sort of guessed that it would be a Bibby's trip - through what Matt had said.  We have all been wanting to go to Beamish for a while, it was a great idea to use Bibby's to do it - makes the whole day much more relaxing.  It was an early start, 7.30 but worth it.  We got to the coach and found we were the youngest by some way.  I thought that it was a trip to a museum in the summer holidays there would be some children on board, but no - it was full of over 60's.  There were 2 teenagers and Tom and us, everyone else had silver hair!  Oh well it didn't matter.  We had been allocated the back seat and luckily we had 5 seats for the 3 of us, so we spread out.  It was a fantastic result as they were the only free seats on the coach.  I was so relaxed on the way over that I fell asleep!

Writing with a fountain pen in the bank

We got to Beamish just after 10am and got straight on a tram down to the 1900s town.  There was a lot to see and do.  Tom, of course was obsessed by the trams, vintage buses and vintage delivery trucks (a great touch was that all the trucks running around the museum delivering bits and pieces were vintage trucks).  First stop was the tea rooms for tea and a bun (we had been up for ages after all)  We had sly cake (a sort of currant slice which was delicious) and a wonderfully flavourful cheese scone.  We looked in the shops, garage, went to the bakery etc.  Tom got to knead some bread and then in the sweet shop we arrived as they were making sugar sweets which was fascinating - we got to sample them whilst they were still warm.  We went to the bank where Tom had his first go at writing with a fountain pen - not a bad attempt.  We looked in some 1900s houses, including a rather gruesome looking dentists.  Then to the railway where unfortunately the engine had broken down and wasn't running.

Beautiful old trams

Next stop was the pit village where we were going to have fish and chips for lunch, but the queue was enormous and a sign said it would be a good hour before we got served.  We decided to find something else and ended up with pasties and a stottie (roll)  instead. Oh, forgot to mention the wonderful accents of all the staff - full on Geordie which I love.  We then looked around the pit village and spent a while in the school there, where Tom wrote on a slate and we played old games in the playground.  We walked across to the 1820s and the Pockerley Waggonway where the engine was working.  We got to ride on a very very bumpy train in the smallest, narrowest, most basic carriage

Girly swot

I have ever been in.  All good fun and of course Tom really enjoyed it.

By now we were getting quite tired, we decided to get a tram back to 1900s village to experience the pub - Matt had seen that he could get 3 x ⅓ pints and wanted to sample them.  The pub was authentic in that it had sawdust on the floor etc, but children were welcome as were women (phew).  We split up for our last hour at the museum - Matt and Tom went for rides on trams whilst I went in search of some food for tea on the coach on the way home.  We met at the very full shop at 4.30, as is usual in this sort of situation, we couldn't be bothered to look around it and headed straight for the coach.

Tram driver

We left dead on time at 5pm, it had been a long and tiring day and we hadn't seen all of the museum, having given it our best shot.  We relaxed on the way home with sandwiches and cider (the young ones being naughty on the back seat!)  Got home absolutely shattered around 8pm.  So so glad we didn't drive ourselves.  Thank you Matt for a lovely day out.