geocaching with le ciel rouge.

woke up far too early by my little lark BB. it would be alright if she came and just snugged, but she rolls over me, blows raspberries etc etc and thoroughly wakes me up! sun shining tho, so making hay required!! daddybean sailing again! i had girls up, dressed and breakfasted and got rabbits sorted. for the day, we have a day rn on the grass, and i used bits of slate etc to make a non burrowable bit around the inside of the edge. it seems to have been successful.

SB did a lovely clarinet prac, and then struggled with ledgerlines in her grade 2 music theory and BB did some cooking mama. i hung out washing, found NT cards and carpark thingy, packed bags etc and managed to liaise with Z despite BK failing! so we had a plan!!

we arrived first – always like that! was uncertain, as something has happened to the car clock in the family car, and i didn’t think 19:53 seemed likely! something also has happened to the rear mirror as well [shouts at the maintenance man!]. so i felt partic flustered driving out, and hope wasn’t speeding past the police [loads of traps about at the moment]. they were 5m short of where 30 becomes 60, so it is a possibility .

anyway, we had a look around houghton mill, and i had a camera fail after a couple of pics – battery ran out, and the spare was also juiceless. wasn’t too bothered as Z always has a camera on her. Unfortunately she had left hers at home, and wasn’t to upset because i always have a camera on me… luckilly she took a few shots with her camera-on-phone. With NT membership, it didn’t matter that it was a half hour dash! they were milling, and always v interesting. there are now some binoculars to look long the waterway – we mostly saw splashy humans!

Joining lecielrouge we set off to first geocache, which was a fail. we thought we could see where it might be, but it wasn’t, so after trying from 2 angles, we gave up and moved on! luckilly we got into our stride and had a really fab walk with not too much flagging from BB [and nearly 4 miles in total] luckilly, the longest distance was to next geocache, which was found v easily, and TB’s moved on. SInce Z had baked some choc brownies [delish!] we all had one and perked up, and i provided cherries and drief fruit – not quite so exciting!! an easy enough and pretty shaded walk to the next geocache, with a stop to admire a foal on the way. a nice scramble up thro brambles, but then easily found again. then a leisurely walk back, with BB getting into the groove of walking [i was a bit worried she would have a bit of a melt] and poor W being harrassed by the 3 bigger girls to carry them. it was a hot day to carry 3 girls with an average age of 10!

we didn’t do the 4th one, as BB needed a loo stop, and TBH, i was thanking lucky stars no melts had happened, and tho happy for the others to go on, and take BB to relax by mill, we all came back. another look for cache 1 – still a fail! so icecream and a bit of watercolour drawing. – mostly of tents rather than mills and cherry trees that were around a beautiful. then a final attempt at cache 1, and abandoned :sob: fab day tho, thankyou to le ciel rouge.

BB asleep in nano-seconds in car home [as anticipated] and daddybean home when we arrived. he has passed his sailing level one. rabbits still in day run – phew! so relaxed, SB coloured, BB ds-ed, then watched the last 2 episodes of robin hood whilst eating dinner, and to bed. Both SB and BB ‘won’ a book for doing lots of things on their home ed options list, so BB picked a dr who book [surprise] and waiting to see what SB will pic. the last one she chose was

which sparked quite a lot of discussion.