Camping at Southwold

We headed down to the coast at Southwold for a few days at the beach over the half term with some of the kids friends from school and their families. The weather was bit rough but went anyway to see how bad it was.

Turned out to be pretty bad! Wind was howling in at 20+ knots and waves thundering onto the beach. The camp ground, which like many english campgrounds is a big open space was rather lacking in shelter and consisted of a series of islands in one vast puddle.

Kids had fun playing on the beach and going to the sweet shop in town. We wandered down to the pier and they ferreted aroung the arcade on the pier - a whole bunch of 'alternative' arcade games made by some local artisan. A lot of fun, then off to play on the cannons and have dinner of cod and chips at the Harbourside pub. Just about the best cod I have had in the UK.
Apart from the beach and beatiful old houses Southwold has an Adnams brewery. Looked at the real estate agents (what else do you do on a wet day) - one of those funny little beach huts along the sea front costs 70k+, 2 bed apartment 400k.
J is pretty wrecked today, M chafing at the bit and annoyed that her brother is so flaky. Big M still in Netherlands, must be heading to Paris soon.

Cluedo

J's class performed a play written by their teaching assistant this week - we have heard about nothing else for weeks. J has been singing the songs non stop. It is a bit quieter now it is over and he isnt practicing. J was one of the policemen and had 2 lines to say. Needless to say we have hundreds of photos and video clips of the event.
Little M is off to Kentwell after the half term break - this is a tudor mansion which hosts and annual reenactment of its heyday. Everyone on the property during the reenactment is dressing eating and talking Tudor, so the school kids have to do their best to dress up. This is another one of those letters you get which tell you to build a scale replica of the space shuttle by tomorrow morning or your child will be scarred for life! Big M and Little M have been busy making a costume.

Big M is off travelling tomorrow - Groningen and Paris then back next weekend. She is back for a week then off to Dublin, Toronto and Atlanta. We are heading to the beach, weather permitting, for the first few days of the half term break then off to York to catch up with some friends from Minnesota who are visiting.
Nice Grandma made a special bear for J to take to hospital which they both think is wonderful.

The Meadows

Despite being absolutely shattered yesterday the kids were up for swim in the Cam today. Big M went off to the Gym in the morning which takes her half and hour each way to ride. One of J's friends came over and they played in the garden and worked on their book before heading to the river with big M. I went for a ride (about 12 miles) and met up with them at the river.


They had a fantastic time leaping into the river and trying to splash the people passing on punts. The water is freezing so eventually they turn blue and have to stand in the sun to warm up for a while. One the boys from little m's class came past with his parents - they werent letting him in the river but had to cave in once he saw one of the girls from his class swimming!

Southwold

The weather remains fine and sunny...for a whole week. We will no doubt shortly be declaring water rationing and drought. Everything is suddenly GREEN. all the trees now have leaves and the grass is growing - seems like several inches a day. Since it was such a beautiful day on Saturday we drove 2 hours to the beach at Southwold on the Norfolk coast, about 10miles south of Yarmouth.


Kids had a blast - 6 hours swimming and playing on the beach then fish and chips on the pier before all melting down and being unable to agree on whether to drive 2hrs home or find somewhere to stay the night at the coast.

This is the bit of beach we lobbed up at to start with - turned out there was more sand the other side of the pier, but when you havent been to the beach for 9 months (and you are 8 or 10 years old) you pretty much just have to make the straightest line from the car to the sand with no mucking about to find the best bit!

The water was absolutely freezing, and as you can see the beach has a few too many rocks for comfort. When little M turned blue we walked along past the pier for a mile or so until they found a place to bury J.

Of course when they saw the Morgan in the photo they had to have a picture 'for Grandpa'.

There is a possibility we will be going to Southwold for a few days at half term with some of the kids school friends. Big M is off travelling again at the end of the week and we have some friends coming to York who we hope to catch up with later in the month.

Reach Fair

Mayday bank holiday weekend was a scorcher...temperatures in the low twenties and sunshine! Had to dig up the sunscreen to protect our delicate white skins from third degree burns. We cycled over to Midsummer common for a look at the fair on Saturday...the highlight was watching a man opening the lock gates on thre river.
On Monday we drove out to the village of Reach for their fair. This is supposedly the oldest fair in England - started in 1201.

They had local kids dancing round a maypole - this is quite a complicated thing and they make complicated patterns with the ribbons - bit like a game of cats cradle. Perhaps the most amazing thing was that the 10-15yr olds didnt make a single mistake in their 20min routine.

The morris dancing was a bit of a mystery to J until they started hitting each other with sticks, then he was interested!

The traction engine was fascinating - especially wathcing them get it off the low loader - which was not much newer than the traction engine. Kids insisted on a picture for Grandpa.

Just in case you were worried, there were of course lots of rides, bouncy castles, ice cream vans etc. J and little M were pretty shattered after a couple of hours, as were we.

See if can spot little M's haircut in the following picture...she had about 6 inches off and is hoping to donate her hair to a charity that makes wigs for kids on chemotherapy.