More holiday news

Time to finish the posting for the Easter term break. Last day on our journey to Charmouth we went to Maiden Castle, the largest intact hill fort in Britain, and boy is it impressive - they say about 50 football pitches inside. Really quite an impressive structure - kids particularly enjoyed rolling down the sides!! We drove back home uneventfully and had a relaxed weekend.

M went to see Bach's St Matthew's Passion at Kings Chapel and it was truly fabulous - 3.5 hours long and a very numb posterior by the end of it. Incredible performance though. Next year try for a better seat. Took the kids to London to the Natural History Museum, which they loved, it was INCREDIBLY crowded. In fact the calmest and least crowded place was the basement lunch room reserved for kids!! We didnt get to the dinosaurs part cos the line to get in to the animated dinosaurs was 1 hour long!!!!! Thankfully we were able to convince the kids that there are other things worth seeing. They were blown away by seeing the fossils of ichythasaurs collected from Charmouth and Lyme Regis where they had just been. Little M has adopted Mary Anning as a sort of heroine at the moment - way cool. She has got a whole heap of fossil and natural history books and pours over them - and makes me read her descriptions of types of rocks for her bedtime story. This is very boring for mother, but she thinks its fascinating. Obviously not a fairy story kid anymore, though has seen the Narnia video with a friend and thinks its the best ever. They started back at school today, which both were happy about, so onwards to the next break at the end of May. And the weather is finally improving so things are looking up!!

Easter break - part 2

Next day dawned gloriously sunny, though still fairly brisk! We drove down to Dorchester, which is a lovely town, and went to the 'world famous dinosaur museum' which was pretty good. Havent seen J so excited for ages - jumping around so much I doubt he looked at anything! Then on to THE BEACH. We had booked a caravan break for 4 nights but one doesnt get in until 4pm here, so we stopped at West Bay which is the first beach near where we were - all gravel of course, and R and the fossil hound went fossil hunting. A good time was had by all. Then on to Charmouth, which is one of the great fossil hunting beaches - and it was GOOD. Had everything, sand, sea, river, fossils.... and the sun shone (tho I doubt it got about double figures temperature wise the whole time we were there).

We had a great time finding fossils of ammomites and shells and looking in the mudslides and cliffs. We walked on the Cobb at Lyme. R and J walked back from Lyme Regis to Charmouth one day and while J skipped daintily across the mud, R SANK and only escaped by abandoning his shoes and crawling out. Unfortunately I have no pictures but it sounds pretty funny. J said he was going to write school holidays reports of My Dad Fell in the Quicksand - I cant wait!!

Easter Break - Part One

Well being fed up with the cold and dreary Cambridge term we decided to take off for a 5 day break. We have wanted to go to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral and Lyme Regis/Jurrasic Coast for a while so we decided to just do it. Weather on the drive down was pretty bad - we left on Sunday morning which is the only time to drive anywhere in this country, so we had a good run.
We got to Stonehenge in just over 2 hours (how do we know - cos the Audi has a REALLY ANNOYING feature of flashing 2hr at you repeatedly if you have been driving more than 2 hours - hope there is an override on this in Aust!!). Stonehenge was really impressive, as were the barrows surrounding, truly an amazing thing. Fairly packed with tourists, but not appalling - but then it was REALLY cold with a bitter wind. All photos show us cowering in the freezing wind, and then it started to rain so we scarpered. The kids were really impressed.

Next stop was Salisbury Cathedral - which on Sunday was free (donation anyway). Cathedral has amazing ceiling as well as other wonderful features. Kids loved all the amazing sculptures - including the death throes ones!!! Salisbury itself seemed a bit run down, and it was pouring with rain still so we went on through the
Salisbury plains looking for somewhere to stay. Tried one place, cheap but only a 3 bed room, no good - the next had 2x2bed but 180 pounds a night.... haha.... but just up the road found a lovely B&B in the old bakers - and added bonus it was opposite Nigel Mansell's old garage (for DD this is pictured - apparently Mansell used to land his helicopter in the field opposite and come over, as you do, the B&B owner used to like going over and looking at his cars - it was just outside Blandford Forum in Pimperne).