Ireland

Half-term break and one week off school = one week in Ireland. This is the plan.

Belfast - Dublin - Youghal - Killarney - Bodyke - Sligo - Belfast.  

760 miles of emerald green here we come J

Brecon - Day 2

Just as brilliant as yesterday's hiking was catching up with the relatives, something we've missed out on living in Australia.

Huw and Bec, Miss Missy, John and Wendy, The Heaths minus Charlotte and Gareth and Bethan.

John and Wendy very kindly put us up for the weekend. This is the view from the front of their house.

After breakfast it was off for another walk, but only a little one this time.  

And on the way home we passed through more gorgeous countryside

This was a special weekend, we all loved it and Daniel and Jeremy are now claiming they like Wales better than England. Thank you for organising it Dave and Gareth J

Brecon - Day 1

Last weekend we went hiking in Brecon.  The scenery was great, the hike was exceptionally beautiful and catching up with relatives was lovely.

Here we all are, rip roaring and ready to go. The walk had options, full scale would take in 4 peaks, all with crazy names - Corn Du, Pen y Fan, Cribyn and Fan y Big (see what I mean!).  Shorter options cut out peaks with an early loop back to the car park.  We decided to play it by ear.


So off we went, up, up, up, a little more up and then a a bit more. Miss M said she was a bit tired after about 20 steps, but then kept on plodding on until we reached the top of Corn Du, which then brought Pen Y Fan (the second and highest of the 4 peaks) tantalisingly close.  So close we couldn't say no, so more plodding and there we were - 886m above sea level at the top of Pen y Fan.

Decision time - two more peaks or head back.  Emmy made the decision for us, despite her initial 20 second bout of tiredness, she was up for it.  Hiking in the Brecon Beacons was getting the double thumbs up and she wasn't finished yet! Onwards and upwards (and downwards too this time).  The picture top left below is from Cribyn looking back to Corn Du and Pen y Fan.  Bottom right is us on the final peak, Fan y Big, with the other three in the background.

Emily was brilliant and the boys had a ridiculous amount of energy and ran, jumped and rolled around right to the end.

The Beacons are rugged, windswept and treeless.  The grass is short and slightly golden.  Further below the fields are green and the hills gentle and rolling. As we walked down from the peaks the countryside began to look like this.

Vibrant green farmland.....

dotted with sheep and cut by skinny farm lanes.

All up, we hiked about 11 miles.  We were lucky with the weather and got to see the Beacons and surrounding countryside at its very beautiful best.  

Legoland and Windsor Castle

Monday 6 May is a bank holiday in the UK which means no school - I don't know who was more excited about that - me or the kids.  Anyway - an extra day off means time to explore so off we went for a two night stay in the tiny village of Gerard's Cross in Buckinghamshire.  Gerard's Cross is gorgeous, is a commutable distance to London and is the home of very wealthy people living in million pound plus houses.  By contrast, the only reason we ended up there was because the village hotel happened to have a special on family rooms at the bargain price of £74 a night.  Yee har!

So, after school on Friday we hit the road.  We heard on the radio there was some "congestion" on the M25 going in a clockwise direction. PANIC - do we attempt a detour, do we go home, do we go to the pub and wait it out?  Hmmm - how long did it take us to work out we were actually travelling in an anti-clockwise direction.  Phew!

And apart from a massive traffic jam about 1 mile from the hotel and about 20 miles of roadworks on the anti-clockwise M25 our journey was fine.  (Good thing too as we have to do it again in about 2 weeks when we head to Brecon for a weekend).

Anyway - this is part of the reason we went to Gerard's Cross......... 

A little London

Yep - Gerard's Cross is close to Legoland, where there are rides, and Star Wars figures

Models galore...

Sacre Coeur bottom right

And the odd dinosaur or two.......

And that wasn't all, the next day we went to Windsor and of course Windsor Castle - the magnificent  place the Queen calls home.  After a working week at Buckingham Palace the Queen spends most weekends relaxing here at the Castle.  She was there when we visited, not that we saw her L

 We were lucky to catch these close-ups of the Beefeater guards.....

doing their change-over.....

Windsor itself is a lovely place.

And much to Emily's delight we saw a wedding, complete with horse drawn carriages and very formal dresses.  Only thing missing was the bride! I am assuming she was being fashionably late, but we had to go and Miss Emmy was NOT happy at missing out on seeing her.

Norsey Woods

Emmy recently went on a school excursion to nearby Norsey Woods.  The aim of the excursion was to search for "mini-beasts".  Accompanied by a ranger off they went.  Emily must have been pretty impressed with her adventures because she insisted we experience the delights of searching for mini-beasts for ourselves.  So off to Norsey Woods we went with Emmy up front and in command.  The instructions were to lift logs, examine underneath, catch any mini-beasts and place them carefully in a plastic container.  The range of mini-beasts included: worms, ants, lizards, wood lice, centipedes, slaters and snake worms.  

This was right up the boys alley and they did most of the log lifting.  Much of the wood was soft, rotten and as light as a feather, so those impressive displays of uber-strength below are in fact all an illusion J.

Underneath the lifted logs we found a worm, some wood lice, loads of slaters and a centipede.  Emily carefully collected the beasts and then screamed and dropped them all because something slimy crawled up the container and touched her hand.  Back to more log lifting.

On the way back the boys constructed a seat from sticks and gave Princess M a wee ride.

Once out of the woods we strolled along Norsey Road - one of the best streets in Billericay and lined on either side with million pound mansions.  One side of the road backs onto the woods and the blocks are massive - quite a few have pools, although I'm not sure the return on these would be worth the investment.  The middle right is my favourite and a I'm thinking a couple of million pounds ought to do the trick J

London perfection

How lucky am I that Margot lives in London?  Not only do I get quality friend time, but get to see more of this beautiful city at the same time.  And this latest trip saw London at its finest - clear blue skies, a warm 15 degrees, spring flowers and not a breath of wind.

We walked and rode all over - through St James's Park to Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Monument, past Big Ben and over Westminster Bridge, along the Thames to the Borough Markets, over the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's, back over the Millennium Bridge and further along to the Tower Bridge. And that was just day one.  Phew!

Here are some of the sights we saw along the way.....

St James's Park

Looking towards Big Ben from Trafalgar Square

The Tower of London and the Tower Bridge

Very red buses and very green grass near St Paul's Cathedral

Tall pointy things and bottom right - taken from bike whilst paused briefly at lights, Margot is up ahead
waiting for me to catch up.

More London sights

And then, after all that nipping around we stopped for a rest and a Pimms or two here - a gorgeous pub by the side of a gorgeous canal just near the Warwick Avenue station on the Bakerloo line.  

Lovely

And then there was day 2 - which was all about Buckingham Palace.  Margot had a job interview to go to so I hung around here.  Lucky me - there was a parade of Beefeaters, or as Emily likes to call them, Beef Heads. I've googled and according to one source the name Beefeater is most likely to have originated from the time when the Yeomen Warders at the Tower were paid part of their salary with chunks of beef!

What a glorious sight!  London at it's best J