One word? When seven would do…

God my parents can be annoying!!!!!

First the rant then 🙂 Ages and ages ago we decided that a holiday cottage rental would be a better plan than a B&B for them when they came to visit us. They end up paying at least £60 a night for B&B and then spend loads of money on food because we eat out when they visit as we are so rarely in a place where we can actually cater for them and entertain them – either with a WWOOF host or simply at a campsite in Willow which isn’t really big enough to cook and serve dinner for six, let alone clear space for the feline swinging after dinner entertainment! About a month ago I started getting twitchy about it not being booked so spoke to my Mum, did some googling and emailed her a load of links for suitable places. She did nothing 🙁 I rang to remind her a week or so later and she assured me she was dealing with it, that she would ask for help from someone at her work if she couldn’t sort it out and was also going to ring my Dad’s cousin who lives in the Durham area (where we would be) and deal with it. Nothing more happened 🙁 Eventually we arrived at our host who was off grid so technically couldn’t actually get online to do anything any more. As it happened we were able to charge up laptops but as any payment needed to be done online to book something we couldn’t book anyway. This situation went on and on until finally the night before we were due to leave and my Mum had merely managed to book two nights in a city centre (with limited parking) Holiday Inn for her and Dad I relented and found somewhere, rung them to check availability and left a message for them to ring my parents back. That was duly booked and as they were paying for it from Saturday anyway it was arranged that we would go there on the Saturday and my parents would go to the Holiday Inn, spend some time with Dad’s cousin and then join us on the Monday. This is such an example of my parents ineptitude for organising anything! I really should manage my own expectations better and usually I do because actually they are no different now to how they have always been and if these things bother me then I should just do the sorting out and make my peace with it, but I didn’t and I got cross instead!

Anyway…. 🙂

Saturday: morning we packed up the yurt, fed the chickens and loaded Willow up. This always takes way longer than I expect it to and I get grumpy because once I am leaving somewhere I want to get going rather than stringing it out. We left a note for our hosts and actually did see Matt and Pip to say goodbye to. We rang my parents to check on their progress as they were intending to leave home early and meet up with us in Durham for lunch before heading to their hotel in Newcastle. They were doing really well having left nice and early so we headed south on the A1M while they were heading north and talked on phones to work out the best place to come off and meet. We ended up having our reunion in Durham services and then decided to drive along the nearest A road and find the first suitable place for lunch we could. That happened only a mile or so along at The Old Mill Hotel which was easily the best meal out we’ve had in a very long time, the food was delicious and the service was really friendly :). We said goodbye to Mum and Dad again (who had a really nice evening and following day with Dad’s cousin Dorothy and her family, so they were really glad they had made the effort to go to Newcastle) and headed to the holiday cottage.

Thanks to missing the M6 turn off and so taking a parallel route which was much windier and slower, if not actually any further it was quite a long journey. We did drive through Kirkby Stephen which I had recalled as having a converted chapel Youth Hostel that had always looked very pretty (but not big enough for our camp bookings) on the website and was indeed very pretty in real life and signs for the waterfall that Kirsty had been to recently. And we had sherbet lemons and our collection of tapes with hits from the early 90s which took me back to my clubbing days to keep us going though :).

We arrived at Silverdale where the holiday cottage was and found a Co Op for some food supplies before tracking down the actual cottage. It had been arranged that the door would be unlocked for us so we didn’t need to see anyone to check in (the owners on site are actually retired and the business is now run by their daughter who lives nearby but is not always around, I think they prefer guests to be fairly self sufficient unless they really need anything). The cottage was nice enough although I think we may have been spoilt by Jill’s cottages as we found it very poorly equipt. There was nothing in the kitchen at all – no tea, coffee, sugar etc. no soap in the bathrooms, just one roll of loo paper in each toilet. As we were in the van none of this was an issue for us as we carry all sorts of things like that obviously but usually in a holiday cottage I’d expect at least a starter pack of tea /coffee and a spare roll of loo roll too. The cottage was ‘upside down’ with the bedrooms and bathrooms on the ground floor and the kitchen, dining room and lounge upstairs. There were two double bedrooms, one with en suite shower and bathrooom (my parents), one single bedroom upstairs and one downstairs. Davies and Scarlett, most amazingly did not leap at the chance for a bedroom each and refused to be parted, particularly by a whole floor so were given the choice and decided to be upstairs.

We’d decided to do nothing other than relax in a large space for the evening so had readymade pizza for dinner, a bath each and then ended up watching documentaries on the TV – the kids were up til midnight watching something about the start of the universe which was excellent and educational but very slack parenting ;).

Sunday: we got up late and set off in search of mobile phone and internet signal as we had neither at the cottage. In many ways this was hugely annoying – I’d been really looking forward to catching up with blog posts, flickring and various other online stuff. In other ways it did mean we spent more time not plugged in which I guess is always good. We walked through the woodland next to the cottage and finally arrived at the beach where Ady and the kids played at crab catching while I did lots of online stuff. We walked back to the cottage via the village for a couple of dinner ingredients we’d forgotten the night before and some chocolate to sustain us for the rest of the walk :).

Dinner was roast chicken, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, yorkshire pudding, gravy – the lot! All the things we had been so missing 🙂 The kids went to bed slightly earlier and Ady and I watched a documentary about Amy Winehouse.

Monday I needed to check emails again as I’d written a sponsored post which was awaiting approval and I also needed to see the state of our bank account. I walked into the village – getting lost on the way through the woodland – and went to the little branch library there. It was very charming and the village generally reminded me of the Vicar of Dibley. While I was in the library about 3 people came in and out and all of them chatted and included me in their conversations, which was sweet but very distracting! I had a talk with the librarian about libraries generally which made me slightly nostalgic for my old job. I was able to check emails and find the article had been approved – the person said it was a ‘wicked piece of writing’ which I took to mean she liked it and was very young rather than it was written with evil intent 😉 😆 – but that the security on the library internet wouldn’t let me log in to any site requiring passwords so I couldn’t actually publish it, check my bank account or get into blogger.

I walked back, stopping every few paces to check signal on the mifi until I found somewhere I could get online. I tried in the church yard, a bus shelter and a park bench but finally found somewhere on the bank of a footpath up into the woods and installed myself there for an hours tucked up against a tree furiously typing away. I was visited by a farmer on his tractor checking I was okay and three people walking past. I’m fairly sure they all discounted me as a nutter when they realised I was on a laptop, sitting on soggy ground halfway along a public footpath in a field but I am quite used to being considered a nutter these days 😆

I got lost again in the woods on the way back to the cottage and arrived in time for lunch – home made rolls (I had made myself in the morning) with homemade chicken soup (made by Ady from the previous dinner leftovers). Having explored some of the cupboards in the cottage we had found that there were four puzzles, all marked as having several pieces missing on the boxes, so I decided for want of anything better to do I’d start one of them. I chose a 500 piece blue tits eating strawberries picture which had six pieces missing and was very proud of finishing it in under 24 hours :). Little things …

Ady and Scarlett went out for a walk in the afternoon leaving Davies and I at the cottage. As we didn’t know what time Mum & Dad would arrived (and couldn’t ring them to find out!) I hung around and did more puzzle while I waited.

They finally reached us and Mum & I popped out for food supplies. We had a very late dinner of lasagne which set the tone for the week being with very slipped mealtimes.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are all slipping into each other so I think I will just round them up really. We had several walks through the woodland again and never managed to take the same path twice. We went to the beach a couple of times, seeing both very low and very high tide and doing more crab hunting, stone skimming and internet using. We went to the village a couple of times, nearby Carnforth a couple of times and Lancaster once. Dad and I completed a 1000 piece puzzle we bought for 50p from a charity shop but ended up having 3 pieces missing. We finished it just as we were supposed to be leaving the cottage this morning :). We ate lots, drank lots, baked bread every day, made a birthday cake for Dad to celebrate his 73rd birthday today, saw loads of wildlife including deer, crabs, toads and frogs, butterflies, a sloworm, various birds including woodpeckers, kestrals, buzzards, cormorants, different gulls, geese and did loads of walking.

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It was a predominantly lovely week. My Mum irritated me a fair bit, we had some very heavy talks about what happens next which were not totally resolved and I know us four left more tired than we arrived thanks to late nights, lots of looking after my parents with food and drink and far more drinking than we are used to these days BUT it was a lovely area, it was good to spend proper time with them, nice to have use of a kitchen and a bath and a real treat to have the place to ourselves for the first two nights :).

Today: Dad and I had stayed up til nearly 2am trying to finish the puzzle so we were pretty tired this morning. We packed everything back up, gave Mum & Dad some more stuff (including our tent which we had decided we didn’t need any more but feels like a big deal to have gotten rid of – it was our emergency home!) to take home. We’d booked a campsite yesterday for tonight and tomorrow – cheap, nasty and slightly rough but cheap, in the right place and with hook up and most importantly mucho signal for mobile and internet :). We got here within about half an hour and the bloke let us pitch up depsite it saying we couldn’t arrive til after 2pm and it only being 1130am. We had a cup of tea, snaffled an emergency packet of cheese biscuits between the four of us and then walked into Morecambe. It’s a very typically northern seaside town – a slightly seedy air about it and depsite it being peak season there is a lost and left behind feel to it too with lots of the shops and hotels boarded up 🙁 The town was full of people smoking and I heard about five children being threatened with smacks within about half an hour! 😯 We walked all round before heading back which felt like a huge walk by the time we arrived back at the van although I am sure it was no more than 5 miles round trip. A little girl came to call for Scarlett to come and play which she was rather reluctant to do but did in the end. She is not one for making friends without Davies really and I don’t think she actually talked to the girl much but she was clearly interesting enough to be called for again later in the evening :). We had dinner of leftover lasagne from a dinner during the week. I caught up with Jill on the phone and am finally now caught up with my blog so I can start tomorrow ready to blog the day on the actual day :).