Audley End

We went to Audley End house for an outing. Fabulous house owned by the Earls of Suffolk for a while and variously the royal family until it got too expensive to keep up then was given to the nation - you can see why its so big, and yet is apparently 1/4 of the original size. Children had a lovely time with dramatic slayings in the gardens!!

Big M been to NY this week which was great but exhausting, just 3 days, 24 hours travel and 48 hours there, its hard work! Good conference though. Went shopping at Macys but at 7pm decided that better go back to hotel in case I fell asleep in the shop (it being midnight UK time!). J had a play at school this week, he was the cockatoo in the mask!!

Elephants bums and fornicating snails

A busy weekend! On Saturday M took the kids to buy new shoes in Colchester and then on to the zoo to see elephants (for some reason the kids have been desperate to see elephants since we got to england). A big hit, they came home with a toy tiger each as apparently we do not currently have enough soft toys. R went for a couple of hours ride...M is off to the US for three nights next week so need to get some r&r in now!

Sunday wet and grey so of course this is the day little M decides she wants an adventure - specifically she wanted to go climbing. Managed to sell her the idea of walking around in the rain as an alternative and drove out to Devils Dyke. This one of a number of saxon ditch and mound structures (all of which seem to be called devils dyke) in this area. It runs 12 miles in a fairly straight line cutting across the line of no less than 3 roman roads. Apparently it was intended to keep the roman british at arms length in 600-700ad. Starts in a swamp and ends in forest/swamp. Masses of beautiful snails out and about...a number were observed to be reproducing. All got soaking wet and muddy so lots of fun.

Bank Holiday Long Weekend

Forget Paris and Eurodisney - we've been to Newark and the reenactment of the siege of 1646! Saturday was a quiet day pulling the wheels off the car to look at brake pads and a street bbq in Marlowe Rd at the back of the house. Beautiful day and evening, we fired up the barbie for the first time in the UK (it was far and away the biggest in the street). Sunday we drove up to Newark near Lincoln to see a reenactment of the siege of 1646. About 2 hours of 'are we there yet'.
Newark is a town which looks like it is a just a bit far from London...if it was an hour closer it would have been crawling with visitors but as it was the town centre was pretty much empty, everyone was at the reenactment at the castle, and even that wasnt too busy. Cannons do in fact roar loud...there were about 5 cannon banging away on and off all day and sporadic musketry to and from the castle. Usual displays of 17th century craft, food and military drill. J&M updated their sword collection - once again proving that you cant have too many swords! Renee came with us - last time we went somewhere with Renee was to another civil war reenactment in freezing rain, at least it didnt rain this time (not too much anyway!)