Autumn
half term falls in October. For a change we didn't go
away but booked James and Matthew in for swimming lessons
at 9am each day, and did several day trips from home.
One of the local National Trust properties, Hughenden
Manor (once occupied by Benjamin Disraeli) held
a craft activity day, and Matthew took two of his school
friends to see what they could create. After making
bat masks, the boys were allowed to pick some beetroot
to take home, which thrilled them at the time (they
weren't so keen to eat it later).
James
persuaded us that we should make (another) trip to
the Natural
History Museum to see the "Dino Jaws",
a special exhibition about what dinosaurs eat. Many
of the splendid exhibits were animatronic models,
with the meat-eaters particularly gory.
Rather
than fight for an inadequate sandwich in the NHM restaurant,
we took a packed lunch and found the picnic area in
the basement to be an excellent facility. Safe from
those dinosaurs, too.
The
furthest we went this week was to Birmingham, and on
the way we stopped off at Redwings,
a pony and donkey sanctuary at Oxhill, near Banbury.
All the animals were clearly now being looked after
very well, but many had had a pretty hard time before
being rescued.
The
reason for going to Birmingham was to visit Cadbury
World at Bourneville. Bridget had been there a long
time ago, but it was a first for the rest of us. A video
game produced a rather spooky picture of James and Malcolm
that looked like they were made of chocolate, and both
boys tried their hand at conditioning some real chocolate.
Plenty of goody bags to take home, too!
Our
friends David and Alison, with two of their children
Sarah and Francis, joined all of us for another stage
of Bridget's Thames Path Walk from Oxford to Wolvercote.
David brought their dog, Tiggy, who of course liked
to go for a run in the river and shake herself dry over
everyone. Somehow even James didn't notice it was "a
walk", what with chasing the dog, picking up sticks
with Francis and so on.....
