One word? When seven would do…

So I go away for six nights and what happens? A bloody whacking great hole appears in the internet again and your best efforst to fix it are listing what’s kicking around in your fridges? 😆 Just as well I’m back eh?

Six nights, four friends, 1100 miles, 4027 ‘are we there yet?’s, more alterations than a bride who falls pregnant with triplets, has them early and goes on the Atkins diet to lose weight for her wedding’s wedding dress and my full text allowance in one week. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the full and unabridged travelog of the Goddard Tour of the North (including Scotland) sponsored by B&Q, Ady’s company car, Pimms, Guinness, British Beef and Indian Takeaways. Any association with vegan or vegatarian foodstuffs is not intentional and will not be repeated! 🙂

Saturday After further Malice searching and some debate as to whether we should actually go or not we decided to listen to all the tales we’d heard of cats who vanish for weeks, nay, months and come back and the reassurances of my Dad that he’d walk the nearby streets daily looking for her and set off later than planned for our first destination in Cheshire – Lynda and Stuarts.

For those who don’t know Lynda is the lady who looked after the children a couple of days a week when I worked when we lived in Manchester. She came to us through a childcare agency but was with us for well over a year from when Tarly was just 6 weeks old and very quickly became considered part of our family. Her and her husband Stuart are about my parents age and have two sons around my age. They became Grandparents for the first time earlier this year but treat Davies and Scarlett as honourory Grandchildren of their own! Since we have been back in Sussex (just over 2 years) they have come down here several times including once over Christmas and we have stayed with them several times too. They live a few miles from the house we rented while we lived up there so it is a very homely place to stay for us as we know the surrounding area so well and have plenty of other friends locally to visit too.

We arrived around 3pm and Lynda, the children and I lounged around in the garden while Ady and Stuart watched football and drank Guinness – the start to what was pretty much the pattern of our week really. 🙂 We ate dinner outside with the children playing out til nearly 11pm when we all retired indoors.

I also had a lovely surprise from Joyce contacting me to say that some plans of another house guest had fallen through and if we could rearrange accordingly we would be able to visit her after all. So a hasty phonecall to all other tour destinations and a rejig of plans enabled that to be scheduled in. 🙂

Sunday More relaxing and lazing around really. I ventured out to the local supermarket (and very oddly felt all nostalgic about it not being our local supermarket anymore, recalling shopping there with a very small and new Scarlett a few years ago) for Sunday papers and that was as energetic as it got. Ah, apart from the badminton! 😆 Ady and I are, as I believe everyone knows, not built for speed, exertion or physical larks in the main, but the sun got to us (or it could have been the Guinness) and we spent *hours* playing badminton in the garden while Lynda and Stuart entertained the children and all of them were entertained by us! We had such a good laugh – and indeed a pretty good exercise too. I had to use my inhaler at least twice and felt the after effects for a good day or so afterwards! Have resolved to buy a cheap badminton set from Tesco though, it was so much fun! 🙂

We also had a lengthy, interesting and lively conversation about Home Education, education generally, school and childhood and parenting which was all very interesting. I explained about autonomy and we all read the Sunday Times magazine article and debated that. Stuart had been talking to Davies in the morning and had already observed how many questions he asks, how he really listens to the answers and continues asking questions. They had also been playing one of Davies’ latest made up games which we play in the car sometimes where you take it in turns to say a word and the other person has to think up a rhyming word. Not very difficult but always interesting to see what word people will think of first. Stuart was really impressed with Davies’ vocabulary on that and how he came up with words which are not the automatic ‘easy’ ones. Which could be one up for not going down the traditional reading route I guess in that he thinks of words he uses rather than ones which are easy to read so have been linked together in an early reader book.

The children spent the afternoon creating a washing up tub full of water, mud and fallen apples so they required a bathing and were both asleep incredibly early after which Ady and I were treated to an Indian Takeaway – oh and more wine and Guinness!

Monday After a lazy start we packed ourselves off to The Trafford Centre. Dual purpose really – we wanted to have a memory lane style wander round and Tarly needed new doodles as she’s grown a half size and the local Clarkes had none to fit her. So we went to the Clarkes where they both got their first shoes and had the little ‘my first shoes’ picture taken and got her a gorgeous pair of flowery, butterfly adorned doodles – quite the nicest pair I’ve ever seen. Covered in mud and grass stains now of course, but beautiful anyway! 🙂

We walked round for a while and then had lunch there before heading over to Miranda’s for destination number two on the tour. We’d changed to just one night there due to Joyce being added back into the tour and as Miranda’s daughter F is nearly 9 and at school it fitted well to only disturb one night of the bedtime school night routine as it happened. A lovely afternoon for the children playing on F’s climbing frame and trampoline but a sleep for both of them in the car earlier made them dreadful to get to sleep so that was a slightly stressy interval. 🙁

Further eating and drinking (Pimms, followed by wine or beer) outside followed by moving indoors to their beautiful dream kitchen with an entired two walls of windows over views stretching for miles and miles watching the sun set and lights go on all over four counties made a lovely evening. I taught Miranda how to needle felt, she went and got out a load of her hand knitted jumpers and gave us an impromptu fashion show and much hilarity ensued. Can’t quite believe she used to be our boss! 🙂 Much money making schemes, business ideas and big ideas fuelled by drink talking later we all retired for the night.

Tuesday Mindful of the next leg of the trip taking us up to Scotland we stayed fairly close to home in the morning and Miranda took us to a very local ice cream farm and parlour where they keep a small selection of animals (donkey, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, farm cats and a few dairy cows). The children saw probably the youngest kittens they’ve ever seen (two litters, one four weeks with three kittens and one about a week old with five kittens) which they fell in love with. Then we were invited to go and watch the farmers wife feed two day old lambs who’s mother was not making sufficient milk for them. It was done by way of a long tube fed down their throats and they were somewhat reluctant but it made for interesting watching! We also saw turkeys, geese, ducks and peacocks and all their chicks / young too. Then we all had one of the made on site ice creams too. Lovel y:-)

We left there and had a brief but lovely walk along a river bank with the children collecting caught up whisps of sheep wool for me to needlefelt (their idea, not mine!) and I showed Tarly how to play pooh sticks, except we used brightly coloured leaves and talked about currents while we did it. :-). Back to Miranda’s for lunch where the dinner table conversation prompted even Miranda, who pays £10,000 a year for her daughters’ schooling and would never dream of such a crazy idea as Home Education to comment that she could finally ‘get’ what it was all about! 😯 We said our goodbyes, having been plied with a marketing proposal for me to read through and comment on 🙄 and set off for Scotland.

It was a straightforward journey with just one stop for sweeties and just as we pulled past the sign annoucing we’d arrived in Joyce’s area and I spotted her road sign the local radio we’d tuned to announced a workday request for someone of The Proclaimers, 500 miles. So, radio blaring with all the windows down so they could hear it we pulled into Joyce’s crescent! 🙂 Ah the Goddards have arrived!

The children imediately decided Hannah was possibly the best possible playmate by virtue of not being a grown up so still being fun, but being bigger and older than then so able to lift them about and make good suggestions for games. Ady imediately realised that Joyce and I wouldn’t mind at all if he took himself and his dinner and (another) Guinness inside and watched the football so Joyce and I could gossip and drink Pimms! 🙂 Perfect evening!

I seem to recall we continued serious and fairly sensible conversation into the night although I suspect we were just making the same point over and over again. When we had drunk a whole bottle and the clock struck 2 we called it a night.

Wednesday The children got dressed into their sun suits and aside from a brief flirtation with her ‘Lulah dress’ as it has now been renamed forever on Tarly’s part they stayed in them all day. They played with sand, water, water, sand, the trampoline, sand, the climbing frame, water, sand, water and the sand. And they could not have been happier children really! 🙂 We started wine at lunchtime and full details of everything are patchy but we all had a good time! 🙂

I didn’t have to eat a single lentil, mushroom or chick pea. And I got to see what has to be the tidiest under the stairs cupboard I have ever seen in my whole life! 😉 Oh and the biggest pile of cushions!

Thursday Another hard to get going morning, Scarlett (usually the noisiest morning child in the world) had managed to sneak out past Ady, Davies and I and we woke to find her happily chatting to Bob and Hannah. 🙂 We set off to Kirsty and James’ for the final destination on our Tour.

We arrived in time for lunch (sandwiches, beer and bacardi breezers naturally!), the children scattered and we had a lovely afternoon with plenty of bouncing on the trampoline and running around in nettles and tall grass. They have a lovely house which is so perfect for HE and I can’t think of a more deserving family to have such a fab location and exciting possibilities infront of them. We had a final meal (another takeaway, how treated and lucky are we? 🙂 ) outside before finally going in to let the children bath in shifts and go to bed, where they categorically didn’t go to sleep 🙄 while we chatted and Ady and James enjoyed a jenga battle. 🙂

Friday After a very nice couple of hours sitting watching the news, looking at pictures and having breakfast we collected ourselves together and set off on our homeward journey. We’d been invited to Barbara’s (which would have been the final two nights of our Tour if we’d not needed to come home for Malice) for lunch but a quick look at the routefinder showed it to be 40 minutes further via her house so reluctantly we’d decided to just drive as fast back as we could. Kirsty packed us lunch and we managed it with three very brief loo stops. 500 miles. It should have taken 8 hours and despite being totally on schedule to do so, which would have allowed a just before the vet closes quick visit to Malice but we hit the M25, not much more than 50 miles from home and stopped. And there we sat for over two hours. The vets closing time came and went and we finally arrived home at gone 8pm – some 10 hours after we’d set off.

I have flickr’d and may well add some in to this post tomorrow but for now we’d all four like to thank everyone we stayed with this week so much for their fantastic friendship, warmth and hospitality. We felt like such honoured guests and it was apparent how much time and thought had gone into catering for our stay. You are of course, all welcome here any time and we’d love the chance to repay your hospitality but your company, homes and kindness were so greatly enjoyed and appreciated. Thank you. 🙂 xxx