Bloody freezing at Bodiam

Today was Sunday on our ‘deferred weekend’ of Ady being off yesterday and today we’d planned to start using our National Trust membership with a visit to Bodiam Castle, about an hours drive away.
It’s not the first time we’ve been, we went for Boo of the Scream Team’s birthday party way back in 2005 which was a lovely June day where all the children dressed up as knights and princesses:

Davies remembered that visit, Scarlett didn’t, which surprised me but probably shouldn’t given she was only two!

We had a look at the pillbox, which had been internally ‘decorated’ by various people’s handprints in mud

Ady listening to the audio guide while Davies and Scarlett explored and then did some clambering on top:

Then Tarly made friends with a duck

And we spent some time admiring the moat

We had a quick look round the visitor centre which has a mini-museum and ate some lunch sitting on a bench watching two moorhens fighting in hilarious and entertaining style (two males presumably vying for a female) before going into the castle.

It is a stunning castle, externally almost unspoilt although the inside is fairly ruined. There are still plenty of scarily steep stone spiral staircases to climb up and down;

windows and arches to peer through;

and turrets to peer down from and up at:

It was a lovely hour or so before we got too cold and needed to be getting home to get ready for swimming. We kept expecting snow and the sky darkened several times but blew back over again and remained sunny.

Once home Ady got roast beef cooking and between squabbles Davies and Scarlett played a Wallace and Gromit game with the playhouses and figures they’ve got.

We went to swimming and Scarlett got her level one badge. Having refused to fork out more money on top of lessons to pay for a badge for Davies and him not being bothered anyway I decided if I was buying Scarlett’s badge then I should probably get Davies’ too so got both of their level one badges and sewed them onto their swimming bags tonight. They both had good lessons and are making progress. Every week I pledge to try and go swimming with them between lessons and every week I fail to manage it, so I won’t say that I really must try but I do think they’d benefit from it ;).

Home again for roast beef and Simpsons watching until they finally had another late night. Lots of interesting conversations today about things like drinking alcohol and smoking, advertising and marketing and some classical music appreciation when we happened upon Classic fm and left it on for a while in the car. And now, because being a bitch to people is really rather exhausting and although I’ve been better today than I was yesterday I am still very aware that my frame of mind has been far from forgiving, patient and loving 😳 I’m off to bed.