The end of the summer

Once we had got back from France, the kids weren't ready to sleep in beds. So they decided that they were now living in the garden in a tent - Swallows and Amazon's style. They went to the shops to buy their food and then cooked it on an open fire. There was lots of corned beef involved, but they did cater 3 meals a day for several days and make one bar of chocolate last a week. Their choice breakfast - malt loaf and apples!

We made some ginger beer to accompany their meals, but it turned out rather weird so they took it around to friends' to share.

On a rather chilly and wet day we went to watch the York Soapbox Race;

 

and then warmed up with lunch in the City Screen.

We went on our first family trip to the cinema and discovered that Thea isn't quite ready for the full disney-pixar experience on the big screen yet.

The kids spent all day, everyday making the most of all the screen-allowances at multiple friends' houses, and when they ran out, started on board games. This game of risk continued over several days!

Thea and F practised their face painting skills:

And when friends weren't available, we had to resort to science. We excavated fossils from sandstone;

and experimented with liquids of different densities.

Half term 2

And then there were more normal things. Thea made butter by shaking cream.

Nathaniel spent the day in Durham playing hockey.

Thea played with friends.

And the then Nathaniel and I spent the weekend at the Birmingham Conservatoire playing recorders. We enjoyed our journey by train (which was definitely part of the adventure, especially when you have a book of logic puzzles to entertain you!) and then Nathaniel and the other York kids did a sterling job at rehearsing with Conservatoire students until 8:30 at night.

We were playing Matilda (Walter Bergman), complete with percussion, and The Shepherdess, a new composition written around the strangest and naffest fairy story found in Walter Bergmans' papers after he died. It was great fun. Nathaniel learnt a lot about counting bars and playing atonal music, and I learnt treble fingering!

We stayed in a hotel over night with friends and they got to watch TV at 7am, which was a massive highlight for them! They also discovered that there were linked ventilation gratings that they could talk through.....

Then we did more rehearsals and then met Granny Janni and Grandpa Beard and played a concert in the afternoon. It was exhausting, but pretty amazing, and Nathaniel seemed to really enjoy it!

Half term 1

January sped by, and suddenly it was half term.

We celebrated by immediately taking off to a youth hostel in the North Pennines. It was bitterly cold and when we diverted off the road on the way to check out Cauldron Snout we saw our first proper snow. It was wonderful - a hill-top reservoir with the wind whipping up white horses on the grey water. Cold simply doesn't cover it.

It was about a mile and a half walk to Cauldron Snout, and at times I wondered if we were going to make it or whether we were going to have to carry a child back with a broken leg, such good fun they were having sliding on the ice that covered the track.

But we made it (thanks to a pocketful of chocolate) and found a rushing waterfall behind a most James Bond-esque damn.

We had hoped to go further down the waterfall to admire the Whin Sill cliffs, but the rocks were very icy, and anything that wasn't slippery was sodden peat. Wonderfully treacherous.

We set off onto the youth hostel at Ninebanks later than we had intended, as as the snow came down, we found ourselves driving across the top of the Pennines on a tiny road, half covered with snow, in the pitch black. Never before have I actually used those poles that they put up at the side of the road to mark it in the snow. It was amazing.

But we got there, and found it was just us and our friends in the hostel. So we filled up the log burned, cracked open the whiskey, the children started a mammoth game of Exploding Kittens, and we made ourselves at home.

Next morning we woke to discover that the snow had covered everything and we were living in a proper winter wonderland! We planned to go to Hadrian's Wall, but the Hill's car wouldn't start, so we had a happy morning rolling down hills.

In the afternoon, the lovely youth hostel people found us a sledge and we sledged until it was dark.

We dined on haggis and neaps and tatties and ate like kings.

The next day (after an amazing cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, beans and leftover haggis (seriously, it's good!)), the Hill's departed on an AA truck, and we headed off to Hadrian's Wall.

To our surprise, the snow disappeared as we left our valley and we reached the wall with no snow on the ground. But our walk along the walk was accompanied by lots of ice and intermittant snow flurries, so we were able to have lots of fun pretending that we were soft southern roman soldiers posted to the farthest frontier.

In preparation for world book day, we took a photo of the children reading The Eagle of the Ninth in milecastle 39 (in the snow).

And we visited that tree. You know, the sycamore that you visit on your way from Dover to Sherwood Forest by horse:

There were a surpising number of people around. We decided that a Monday in February in the snow was the right time to visit, and that we wouldn't return during the summer holidays (except possibly at sunrise).

And then we drove home across the North Pennines in the snow (which we could see this time) and vowed to come back again soon.

December 2 (other stuff)

Of course there was other stuff that went on too....

Ian tried for the record for the most number of countries visited in one month (he failed due once he realised that Birmingham is considered the same country). In Rotterdam and Amsterdam he was rewarded with proper snow.

In Paris he was rewarded by his colleague going to the local cheese shop for us a providing a whole bag of carefully chosen cheeses for us!

Thea had cello concert. She decided to play a viola piece for her solo(!), and very nice it sounded too.

In fact they all sounded amazing. There was not one child who didn't adjust their tuning as they played (in a positive direction!), and the general tone was incredible. They all were very happy and played us all Jingle Bells. Thea hadn't played it before and did a great job at keeping up by playing by ear and watching Laura (the teacher)'s fingers!

Nathaniel spent most of December writing comics based on the computer game Terraria. One of his friends owns it, but Nathaniel and his other friends have only played it once or twice, so their comics have covered a fascinating array of ideas about what the game might be about!

This is the draft - the eventual comic was much more detailed (with much worse spelling!).