Monday 26 May 2014

What Ian did

What do you choose - an easy life, or being exhausted but having done interesting things? Hope you chose the latter.....

Siracusa

The old ampitheatre. They didn't bother visiting the more modern one - after all who needs to see a perfectly preserved Roman ampitheatre?!

Talinn

Modes of transport have featured highly in the requests for photos.

San Sebastian

Well, obviously not in San Sebastian, but on that trip.

All hail Ebay....

.....the bringer of things that you'd never have been able to get otherwise!

Monday 19 May 2014

Sleningford Bliss

We had put dates in the diary for camping long before weather forecasts became available for any given weekend, and as previously mentioned, this didn't always produce an ideal result. However, this weekend the gods smiled upon us. Two whole days of 21 degrees in the sun in a campsite on the river. Perfect.

No seriously, it was perfect!

Sleningford is 45 minutes from York (so travel was easy-peasy), on a bend in the River Ure. The campsite is on an island complete with beaches and slow rapids and rocks to climb on and so on. On Saturday morning, we set up the wood burning stove on the beach, and here we stayed.

Bruce played hunter-gathered and got out fly fishing kit, providing brown trout for breakfast.

The kids paddled and dug and splashed to their hearts content.

We read and chatted and drunk tea (and wine and whiskey), and in the afternoon braved the water for some swimming. It wasn't as cold as Ian's face suggests, but the current was pretty strong, and it was definitely hard work.

And there's not much more to say than that. We hardly moved from our pitch by the beach except for a little treasure hunting, and nothing exciting happened apart from relaxed fun. There was general happiness!

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Things that are new

As Ian and I both have near perfect eye sight, someone else can take the genetic responsibility for this!

Sunday 4 May 2014

Sailing Club

We have rejoined the sailing season (it started when it was rather chilly and windy for little people), at open day season, so our first visit was to clear up ready for visitors. Which is always fun!

And then the next day was the open day. It was a little windy and Ian had flown off to more exciting places, so we didn't get to do any sailing, but we spent plenty of time in boats, even if they were on shore.

Thea asked constantly to go sailing, or at the very least to get into the motor boat, but lost her nerve when we got to the jetty. But we talked her in, and Nathaniel looked after her while we had a quick tour of the river.

It all went down hill from then - the next time we took the safety boat out, the motor cut out and couldn't be resucitated and I had to paddle them both back, upstream. Not much fun. So after that we stuck to the other main attraction of YRISC; tansy beetles. Please look them up because I don't have much to say except that, due to their total disinterest in roaming far from our little stretch of the Ouse, we are able to claim that we are safe guarding their uncertain future, and this will help us get grants to rebuild the clubhouse toilets! Here is one:

And here we are looking for one:

And after the tansy beetles have ceased to be interesting (not long), we play with the natural resources!

The next week was a bit better in terms of wind, and we all got out in the RS Slug. Hugh and I tried to teach ourselves about assymetric spinnakers in no wind and then we went out en famille. Thea was entirely convinced, but neither was she unconvinced.

That'll do for now.

And all this sailing malarky is very handy, as it qualifies us for providing interesting afternoons at school. This week we provided the entertainment by putting a topper in the yard and bringing in loads of sailing gear for Class Reception to try on. They seemed to have fun, and so did Class 1 and 2 who we indoctrinated later. And although it got rather silly that evening as Nathaniel and I dragged a topper on a trolley with only one wheel up the hill to berth it at a friends house while Ian rushed off to a meeting in Leeds, it was a good use of an afternoon and YRISC property!