Swimming

The Football Season draws to a close

Sunday 15th May 2016Sunday 15th May 2016Baggie

Again, this update has been delayed due to life (and work) getting in the way. Time is precious and the weather has been glorious (for three days at least) and so many things get pushed to the sidelines, and one of those things is this website. However, nigh on a month is far too long to keep you, dear readers, waiting for a debrief of the latest shenanigans of the Bagnalls, so I shall keep you no longer.

The last time I sat down to regale you with our news the children were yet to return to school from their Easter holiday break, and now we find ourselves a few weeks shy of the half term break. So, what have we been doing and how are Baguettes enjoying the final term of this school year?

It has to be said, that we have not been resting on our laurels, indeed the girls have a more active social life that either Lucinda or me, and probably a more active life that I have ever had (cue the violins!). This is in no small part due to the fact that the girls’ school has a plethora of after (and pre-) school clubs that cover a wide variety of interests. At the start of each term you put your name in the hat against the clubs that you are interested in and with luck you will get into the club that you want. We gave the girls a full choice of clubs to join, put their names against them and fortunately they both got the clubs that they wanted to join.

The first club of the week is non-school related, however, for it is the joys of Brownies for Éowyn at the local Church hall. She thoroughly enjoys Brownies even though none of the other girls that attend actually go to her school; it is therefore a completely different circle of friends which we think is good for Éowyn, as it develops her social skills, not that they need too much honing. Most of the girls attend the local Catholic school where Ezra attends pre-school. It is quite nice that when we drop Ezra off there that some of the girls that go to Brownies are really excited to see Éowyn. It is a busy start to the week for Éowyn; Brownies finishes late on a Monday evening and Tuesday mornings before school is her first school club of the week: Choir. Yes, choir. Anyone that knows our first born will know that she has inherited her delicate, dulcet tones from her father and so it is quite surprising that she has managed to hold on to her place. Can’t wait for the feedback at the end of term.

There is then a bit of a gap before both girls attend then next school clubs on a Friday afternoon. Éowyn at performing arts (much more fitting to her personality and inherent skills) and Amélie at dance. Indeed, as the beginning of the week is busy for Éowyn so Friday afternoon is the start of a busy twenty four hours for Amélie. After dance she returns home for a quick bite to eat before her third clothing change of the day and from her dance outfit to her Rainbow uniform. Seeing how much Éowyn enjoys Brownies Amélie has followed big sister’s footsteps into the world of guiding. Amélie, who is not old enough to join Brownies (she has another 18 months or so to wait) has joined the local Rainbow pack.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Girl Guiding world, Rainbows is the first step into that world. Girls aged 5 to 7 can become a Rainbow before joining Brownies (at the age of 7) and then the Guides (at the age of 10). We had attempted to get Éowyn into Rainbows before she joined Brownies at the end of last year, but unfortunately all the places had been taken and so we learned from this and had Amélie’s name down ready for the first available place. That place became available as the Easter holiday ended and therefore we were quick to ensure that Amélie went for her taster session. As we thought she loved it and so subs were paid, uniform is on order and she is now a fully fledged Rainbow and thus both girls are members of the Girl Guiding sorority.

Amélie’s busy end to the working week doesn’t stop with Dance class after school and Rainbows after Dance but continues on Saturday mornings with a short walk to the local leisure centre for swimming lessons. She is going to be one fit little girl.

The girls’ week of exercise doesn’t end there either. The local leisure centre runs a Roller Disco every Saturday night. With a shift pattern that gives me two weekends off out of every three, we have headed through the park to the leisure centre to introduce the girls to the world of rollerskating. Ungainly and ill-balanced at first the girls have taken to it very well and although they still resemble Bambi on ice they are growing in confidence and thoroughly enjoy skating around the gym. The first week Lucinda and I were fully engaged in helping them stay upright while Ezra sat on the sidelines, however he didn’t want to be left out and all week asked if he could rollerskate the following Saturday. All for equally opportunities the following Saturday we obliged.

He didn’t take to it in the same way as his older sisters. He didn’t like having the skates on (even before he tried to stand up). I took him to one side of the gym and tried to give him confidence on his wheels, as I had with Éowyn the week before. He didn’t like it. He kept saying that he was going to fall, despite my reassurances that he couldn’t fall because Daddy was holding him. Nevertheless this did not fully reassure him and he got a little more upset crying out ‘Daddy, I’m going to die rollerskating!‘ After stifling a laugh, I thought that perhaps he was not quite ready for rollerskating and carried him to the side of the gym and took his rollerskates off. We will see if his interest in rollerskating is piqued next time we go.

Ezra seems to have something about dying at the moment. He said to me one morning, ‘Daddy, I don’t want you to go to work.‘ I explained that I had to go to work and he replied, ‘But Daddy, if you go to work you will die.‘ I asked him why he thought I would die if I went to work. With his nascent interest in the dark side of the force I am not sure whether his reply was a warning or a threat. ‘Because if you go to work, you will have a car accident and they will not find you because you will fall down a hole.‘ I have been checking my break cables recently.

This may have come from the fact that Ezra has also returned to school and is now doing two full days (plus a half day on a Wednesday). Thus life is changing for our son. He is becoming more independent, he is walking everywhere now, rather than being the lazy tyke that he sometimes was and insisting on sitting in a pushchair. He is interacting with older children at school and although he is used to sharing his space with other children being at school is a different experience. Nevertheless we are proud of how well he is adapting to full days at school.

The weather since the last update has been a little unpredictable to say the least. The weekend after the update there were snow showers, followed the weekend after with 27°C (80°F – for our American cousins) and thus the first barbeque of the season. Indeed we had three very nice days in a row but now the weather has returned to the usual inbetween vernal average. Regardless, the barbeque has had an airing and therefore will be a regular sight at Chez Bagnall.

With summer weather and Ezra’s new found enjoyment in walking, new shoes needed to be bought. As anyone with small children will realise, kids shoes are expensive (especially when you need to buy three children shoes at the same time) and they grow out of them so quickly. All three children were measured for shoes and all three of them a grown so much that new shoes were a necessity. Let’s hope they last over the summer – I’m not banking on it.

As usual around this time, work is busy. It is the culmination of many of the sporting seasons, including our biggest client the Premier League. It has been a fantastic season for the neutral with Leicester City winning the title, and equally fantastic as a West Bromwich Albion fan with Aston Villa relegated. It is amusing but there is a genuine fear that it will take Aston Villa a long time to regain their former glory, something that in all honesty one doesn’t really want to see for any club. Villa’s season was poor but I don’t think Spurs’ fans will wish to be reminded about the last day of this season either, however I feel that life long Gooner, Terry Wood, will be smiling from that North Bank in the sky tonight. (OK, pedants, with Manchester United’s game postponed due to a suspect package it technically wasn’t the last day of the season but it was certainly the last day for the other 18 clubs!)

Coupled with the end of season mania we have had the BBC in the house producing their transmission of the World’s biggest non-sporting live event: The Eurovision Song Contest for the second year running. Unfortunately, there were no parties at an embassy (unlike last year), no raffles and thus no weekend trip to European cities. Let us not forget that we are launching two new channels before the end of May and preparing all the upgrades, connectivity and new installs that will occur over the summer. It is going to be a busy one and you may not see too much of me! (I will get my excuses in now!)

I am not the only one with busy weeks ahead. Éowyn is in the middle of her Year 2, Key Stage 1, SATS. KS 1 SATS test the children’s ability in English and Maths. The English exam is comprised of four tests: Grammar and Punctuation, Spelling and two Reading papers; while Maths is comprised of an arithmetic and a reasoning paper. The results of which, are scaled, graded and then rated against the national average, all under the pretence of highlighting where your child might need extra help. I don’t think that I have ever met a teacher that doesn’t know where the children in their care need extra help. This is just a way of rating school but all it is doing is putting young children under pressure. Education is not about passing exams it is about teaching children a variety of skills to help them to find their place in the world. Performance tables can only give you a narrow view of a child (or a teacher, or a school), luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Thankfully, Éowyn’s school have been fairly relaxed with these exams and thus Éowyn has not felt any pressure and we certainly have been playing the importance of these exams down. Éowyn has been doing really well at school lately, moving up levels in maths and keeping up her record of 10/10 in every spelling test; her hand writing is neat and her reading is fine so whether she can identify if the verb tense is a present perfect or present progressive or what 75% of 60 is, kind of falls into insignificance compared to whether she can identify why someone is upset, why racism is dumb (her words) and inventing games for her and her friends to play.

Éowyn is not the only one who is moving up levels of achievement at school. Amélie has gone up another level at reading and is now the highest level reader in her class. Fantastic news of which we are very proud, however, other levels of her education made need some assistance. Lucinda’s birthday is just around the corner and Amélie decided that mommy might like some Vanish Gold as a present. I was not ready for the suggestion when she proposed it and let forth a laugh. This upset Amélie. I tried to comfort her while I explained that mommy may not appreciate washing powder as a present but her reasoning was not without justification: it comes in a pink and gold package, so it looks nice and it makes the mommies on the telly happy. You can not deny the logic!

Logic is not something that can be assigned to the following nugget that may have passed you by. The Grim Reaper has added a number of beloved personalities to his toll since the last update and the most prominent of which is arguably Prince. Four years ago I, tongue-in-cheek, suggested that Prince was perhaps a time travelling Maya from the planet Nibiru come to save the world with his purply music, when the 2012 apocalypse did not happen. Well, if this individual is to believed, that was but a reprieve for Prince’s death heralds the end times. What is it with religious apocalyptics? Perhaps they should go back to school and do their SATS!

I think I have preoccupied your time for long enough and I am sure that you are more interested in the latest crop of photos, and there are few hundred extra on the Flickr pages. Therefore, I will bid you adieu and unless I have a car accident and my car falls down a hole I will see you on these pages shortly.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Little miss innocent

The Bagnall Three

Contemplation!

Over the dangerous bridge

I made it across!

And I’m done!

A dash of sand

A just a little bit more

The Baguettes!

Where’s Ezra?

Reluctant model

OK I will smile

Three generations

Wait for me!

Beep Beep!

Roller disco!

Look into my eyes, not at the crisps!

First time skater!

Angry bird!

Let me read you a story

Spider-Ezra!

Pout-tastic!

Let’s go this way!

Lauren and Ezra!

Feeding the sheep!

I like driving!

Feeding the goat

Are you sure it is only six weeks?

Saturday 5th September 2015Baggie

August is always a lean month on Baggie and Lucy dot com mainly due to the start of the football seasons, which keeps me busy at work and the fact that, along with millions of other parents, the kids are to be entertained. Thus there is little time left for tinkering on computers and little time to keep you abreast of the trials and tribulations of the Bagnall family.

So with Éowyn heading back to school (Amélie has a few more days!), what has happened since the Bagnalls returned from Flookburgh and the Lake District? Six weeks is a long time so forgive me if there are omissions.

In an attempt to break the holiday up and prevent the girls from getting too bored we signed them up for a couple of courses. Neither of our girls are very strong swimmers, something that we want to rectify, so the first of the courses we signed them up for was swimming. Not that Éowyn really needed any encouragement but her best friend (from her previous school) Aaliyah was also signed up for the week. Thus the added incentive was that after every lesson she got to play with Aaliyah, a whole week of playing with her best friend!

It seems that the girls have inherited my swimming ability. It appears that I am denser than fresh water. In swimming pools (not the sea) my resting suspension is about 6 inches (15cm) below the surface of the water. Therefore to prevent drowning I need to keep swimming, hence I have never been a strong swimmer and it appears than neither of my girls have a natural affinity to water. Nevertheless it is an important skill to have and so once they are settled back at school we will be signing them up for more swimming lessons.

The second course, only Éowyn could attend for Amélie wasn’t old enough, and again attended with her best friend Aaliyah. Cheerleading isn’t the first course that one would naturally think of as a one week session but we thought that Éowyn would enjoy it. The idea of combining gymnastics with teamwork appealed to us as something that would also be good for Éowyn.

The culmination of the week’s work was a performance at the Rainbow Nursery summer fair in Lyne. Fortunately, the weather held off and so the field didn’t turn into a swamp. The girls’ performance was the first of many acts, which was nice as they didn’t get too nervous. Éowyn and Aaliyah were the youngest of the troupe and so didn’t do many of the over-complicated moves. Nevertheless Éowyn’s forward roll was executed to perfection and was steadfast as the base of the human pyramid.

Éowyn wasn’t over-enamoured with cheerleading, which surprised us somewhat, but it is possibly due to the fact that it was such a quick course: four days, all leading up to a performance. Therefore there was no time to develop the skills that she was lacking. If you could do a cartwheel, you did one in the performance. If you couldn’t, you didn’t. There was no time to teach them how to do a cartwheel, and I think that was endemic throughout the skills. In fairness, it was a taster session and thus wasn’t designed to develop skills but to use the strengths they already have but unfortunately it may just have put her off. We will see.

As alluded to above, August has not been the greatest of months weather-wise, in the UK at least. Temperatures below average, sunshine (and thus my electrical output) below average, rainfall: the fifth wettest August on record. Despite the Bagnalls usual stoicism in the face of such inclemencies even we decided not to incur the wrath of Indra (insert rain deity of your choice) that frequently and risk too many far-flung days out.

Lucinda took Amélie and Ezra to Legoland (Éowyn was having a play date). Fortunately, the rain deity of the day was looking upon the Bagnalls with kind eyes and it was one of the warmer days. Unfortunately, this meant two things: a) Legoland was packed and 75 minutes was not an unusual queue time and b) the wasps were out in numbers. Amélie currently has a real phobia around any kind of flying insect – to the point of hysterics if there is a fly in the house. Obviously, we can’t let that continue and are trying to help her overcome this problem, although with wasps she probably has a point!

Unusually for me in August, I managed to secure 5 days off in row. Unfortunately the weather was awful so we concentrated on jobs around the house and visiting friends in the local area. Nevertheless we decided that we would have at least one big day out. Initially, we thought that we would head to the seaside, however unsure that the weather would hold we decided to head to Frensham ponds.

Frensham Common and ponds cover about 1000 acres lying between Farnham and Hindhead. The common is heathland with two large ponds known as Frensham Great and Little Ponds, and great for wildlife watchers. But we headed there for its sandy beach and to bathe in the Great Pond. Angling and Sailing are also available for member of those clubs but there is a special area for swimming. Unfortunately, the weather was more Autumnal rather than Augustal (if there is such a word). Indeed shorts were a very bad idea as I sat freezing on the sand. Even paddling in the pond was out because there was a bloom of blue-green algae which meant that the pond was closed to the public. However, we made the best of the weather eating our picnic and building sandcastles and reflected that we were glad that we hadn’t headed to the seaside!

The flipside of 5 days off was that I managed to sign myself up for 9 days in a row. Therefore Lucinda decided to take the kids to visit Nanny Fran in West Bromwich. Although it was a flying visit (they were only there for two days) they all enjoyed themselves as they usually do in West Bromwich. I, however, was not having as much fun. I got home on the Tuesday night and decided to have a Chinese takeaway for tea. Now whether it was the Chinese takeaway (fingers point at the Prawns on Toast) or whether I picked up a bug I spent most of the night with my head down the toilet. Now, I now I need to lose a few extra pounds but that wasn’t the way I intended to do it. Unfortunately I had an important meeting the next day and so after a couple of hours of sleep I dragged myself into work, had the meeting then headed home. In a deluge. The rain was coming down so fast that the drains couldn’t cope and the car park at work and our street had inches of standing water. I got home crawled into bed and fell asleep until Lucinda returned home with the kids in blazing sunshine. For a split second I thought I had been asleep for days such was the difference in weather conditions.

The summer has also been a time for changes in the house. We have decorated our bedroom and en suite and Ezra’s bedroom. We have moved a couple of radiators around which has enabled us to change the furniture around in the house making the lounge more cozy and exposing the wall where we are going to have a chimney and wood burner installed. For if the summer is anything to go by we could be in for a cold and snowy winter and so the extra warmth from a wood burner would be most welcome.

The summer has also seen Ezra growing up. His speech is coming along and he is saying a new word nearly everyday. Although some of his phrases are rather strange. One that he spontaneously came out with was ‘I don’t like mayonnaise‘. Not sure why he said it, as we were not offering him any mayonnaise, so we laughed. This only agitated him further and started to get irate shouting ‘I don’t like mayonnaise!‘ I think we have the message!

This week is an important week in the girls lives. Éowyn will enter year two and the large campus of her school while Amélie will start full-time education. Both will be worthy of their own entries so stay tuned.

In preparation for Amélie’s first day, her teacher miss Snow came for a home visit. Amélie was very excited and showed her some of her favourite toys and more importantly her new school shoes. Miss Snow said that she thinks she has seen all of her new pupils school shoes. Must be something very important to all of the new starters.

With those teasers I will leave you there and keep an eye for those updates as well as the Flickr pages as there will be new photos uploaded in the next few days.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Can we drive this home?

Roar!

Piggyback

Olaf!

Hug a snowman

Igglepiggle

Ready to start

The troupe

The cheerleading troupe

The finale

And lift

Getting ready for the lift

And up!

All together

Cheerleaders

Prepared for the summer

Sunflower

Play-doh!

Rainy day entertainment

The iPad wears me out

I’ll just watch a film

Ready for the weather

Blue moon

The bedroom wallpaper

A week in Wales: part two – the holiday proper

Wednesday 11th June 2014Saturday 14th June 2014Baggie

A second update in a day! And the second of the trilogy for this week.

Hopefully you have all read ‘A week in Wales: part one’ if not please click on the link to refresh how we go to where we are.

So, with the girls in the twin room, Lucinda and I in the double room with Ezra’s travel cot half in the wardrobe to maximise the floor space we spent our first night in Kiln Park.

With small children you never get a lie in but at least it was a little reasonable when we got up allowing us plenty of time to get Éowyn ready for her first swimming lesson. Lucinda took her while I looked after the other two. Éowyn thoroughly enjoyed herself and with only one other child in the lesson it was well worth the money. Éowyn was very good, taking instruction well and even ducking her head under the water. Somehow, I think listening to a teacher rather than her Mum or Dad was better for her.

The big bonus with the lesson starting at 0900 is that it was over by 0930 so by 1000 we were out of the caravan and exploring. We decided that the first day should just be spent in Tenby (or Dinbych-y-pysgod to called it by its native name – the little town of the fishes or little fortress of the fish). Tenby is a very old walled seaside town on a natural sheltered harbour. It is a very pretty town, with its mediaeval town walls (which include the five arches barbican gatehouse), a 15th century church, colourful Victorian houses (nearly every house is painted a shade of pastel blue, green, pink or purple giving a very continental feel to the town) and a one way system. The latter is fun negotiating while looking for a car park and you get to see the majority of the town. Nevertheless we soon found the right path to the multi story car park and headed to the beach.

As I mentioned in the previous update Tenby has a large flat sandy beach that is close to 4km long and that was where we spend the morning until rumbling tummies forced us off the beach and in search of lunch. While heading off to lunch we saw a number of boat trips, we decided on the Seal Safari, nearly one hour on a small boat that circumscribes the nearby Caldey Island looking for Grey Seals. Caldey Island is a small island just off the coast at Tenby and is one of Britain’s Holy Islands. It is famous for its Trappist Monastery, the monks of which make up the majority of the population of the island. They raise dairy cattle and make cheese, perfumes and chocolate. Indeed the island has its own postage stamps and currency. However that is a different trip, we didn’t step foot on the island merely circled it.

Our trip was geared at looking at the wildlife and seeing the island from a more unusual point of view. The main draw of the trip was to see grey seals and as such the trip did not disappoint. We saw a number of seals and they must be so used to the incursion into their territory that they didn’t bat an eye indeed some of them didn’t even rouse from their slumber as we approached quite closely. In addition to the seals we saw a number of seabirds that are not regularly seen on shore. Highlights would be in no particular order: cormorants, shags, kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills. The only slight downside was that we didn’t see any puffins but that’s a trip for another day hopefully in the not too distant future.

Éowyn loved the boat trip and was really excited to see the seals. The same could not be said of the other two. Amélie got a little agitated before the boat trip asking us not to die. Damn that Frozen film! For those of you without small children, or a love of Disney movies and for any other reason haven’t seen the film Frozen, the protagonists’ parents die when the ship that they are travelling in sinks in a storm. We explained to Amélie that we wouldn’t die, which she excepted and then as soon as she boarded the boat promptly fell asleep and missed the entire trip. Ezra, on the other hand was asleep when we boarded the boat and stayed that way until we were getting off the boat!

On our return to the caravan a little girl was playing in the next caravan so Éowyn went out and introduced herself. Emmy was 7 years old and although did play with Éowyn you could see it was more Éowyn looking up to (although not literally, Éowyn, though 2 years her junior, was a couple of inches taller than Emmy!) her older friend. Emmy has younger sisters who happily played with Amélie so it was nice for them to play with others.

The next morning was Éowyn’s second swimming lesson but we joined her as a family in the pool afterwards. The pool was not as warm as you would expect (maybe it warms up during the day) but you soon get used to it. Unless that is if you are Ezra. He did not like it one iota and let everyone know, so Lucinda took him out and I stayed with the girls for a bit longer.

After swimming we headed to the nearby town of Saundersfoot. We had looked at Saundersfoot when looking at possible holiday destinations but somehow it missed the final cut. Again Saundersfoot has a large level sandy beach and this time armed with sandwiches and snacks we stayed on the beach the entire day making sandcastles and, in the case of Amélie, digging large holes and trying to fill them with seawater. Never quite understanding why the water kept draining away! Kept her busy!

The long term weather forecast had been pretty horrendous but the first part of the week it had been nice, not hot but dry. Thursday, however,dawned with grey clouds and so we decided that we would head out for adventure. On the way into Tenby and again on our trip to Saundersfoot we had seen signs to Dinosaur Park. The girls both wanted to go and so it seemed like the perfect day to go. I am not sure how to describe Dinosaur Park. It is definitely a park and it definitely has dinosaurs (and other pre-historic creatures) but it is both more and in someways less than that. Yes there are a large number of life-size fibreglass models of large extinct animals but then there are slides, a play barn, and frisbee golf. You can also go water zorbing, pilot disco boats and ride on a number of coin operated (tuppence! yes tuppence a ride!) electric vehicles (my favourite being the Orbiters) as well as ride Wales’ only tubey run.

The highlight (and probably at the same time the lowlight) of the day was the dinosaur trail. Over two dozen dinosaur models laid out in the woods with an ‘expert’ taking you on a guided tour. This was not Jurassic Park. This was a local armed with a tickling stick and a big bag of sweeties taking the children round the woods introducing them to the dinosaurs. Now anyone that knows anything about kids knows that kids love dinosaurs. They know all their names and what they ate and how big they were. I know because I was one of those kids. Unfortunately our ‘expert’ didn’t know that much about dinosaurs and her stock phrase to stop the precocious kids from asking awkward questions, or even correcting her mispronunciations was by replying (add your own Pembrokeshire accent here) ‘You know more about dinosaurs than I do, have a sweetie.‘ It certainly added to the experience. In fairness to her I think she was filling in for a sick employee as later in the day she conducted a fossil hunt and was very good at it (real fossils had been added to a big area of pebbles and if you found a fossil you could keep it – the girls (with a little help from daddy) both found lymnaea). However you would have thought that as an employee of Dinosaur Park you would at least know the dinosaurs in your park, regardless of the actual job that you do.

Dinsoaur Park was a big hit with the girls, we got there when it opened and we left just before it closed and they both wanted to go back (which we could have done with a boomerang ticket for a fraction of the price). The weather wasn’t great but it didn’t really rain, just a drizzle that hung in the air inviting you to walk through it to get wet, but it didn’t matter. It may be stuck in a timewarp (compared to other attractions) but that is its charm. Kids are encouraged to use their imaginations and although the models are not exactly anatomically correct (in line with current thinking), or even that convincing (to the eye of an adult), Amélie still shook with fear when she saw the model of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and that was the magic of Dinosaur Park.

On the other side of the attraction scale was Folly Farm. It is neither a farm or a folly but a combination of zoo, indoor playbarn, steam funfair, adventure rides and the eponymous farm. This is much more of a modern attraction with a good selection of exotic animals (including the only giraffes in Wales) and with more to come. Indeed on our visit they were building a large enclosure to house lions which is due to open later this year. The indoor play area was enormous with three stories of interconnecting tree-house to lose yourself in. That was only half of the indoor attractions, in addition there was a complete funfair (the largest indoor funfair in Europe) with chair-o-planes, ghost train, golden gallopers, dodgems and a waltzer.

Again, we spent the whole day at Folly Farm having another fun-filled day and although it is a regular winner of ‘Best Day Out’ awards (and 400,000 visitors a year can’t be wrong) if you asked Éowyn and Amélie where they wanted to return, it would have lost out to Dinosaur Park. However the visit to Folly Farm was capped with a visit to the gift shop. Before leaving West Bromwich, Nanny Fran had given all the children some money to spend on their holiday and I had told them that they could spend it on whatever they wanted but Daddy wouldn’t buy them anything else. They have to learn the value of money somehow. So the gift shop was the perfect place for them to hone their purchasing skills.

Amélie, saw exactly what she wanted within a minute, a fairy and horse model. She could not be dissuaded from her choice. Eowyn, however, was a little more economically savvy. It must have taken over 20 minutes for her to make a decision, weighing the different combinations of toys that she could afford. Eventually, she made a decision and left the shop with a pack of three mermaid dolls, a cuddly mermaid and a pink unicorn – sounds like a good night out! Ezra wasn’t left out either and indeed he made his own choice too. Lucinda was pushing him around the shop while I calculated the running total of Éowyn’s purchases. As they passed a display of cuddly cowboys, Ezra pointed at them and said ‘that‘. Lucinda gave it to him and he cuddled it. She then gave him a cuddly pirate and he cuddled that too. He then looked at them both and threw the pirate on the ground. He had made his choice. So with Eowyn’s armful of toys, Amélie’s fairy and Ezra’s cowboy we headed to the till, paid and left to grab an Italian meal in nearby Narberth (Arberth) before heading back to Kiln Park.

After two fun-filled days we decided to take it easy on Saturday, with a walk into Tenby and day spent on the beach, building sandcastles for Éowyn’s mermaids! Saturday was also the day that Éowyn’s friend from the next door caravan, Emmy, left to return home. Éowyn got herself all upset, although Emmy didn’t seem quite as upset. So we made a fuss of her and headed to the leisure complex to play Éowyn’s favourite game, Air Hockey.

For our final full day in Pembrokeshire we decided to explore the county and both decided that we would head to St David’s. Although it doesn’t look that far on the map it took longer than expected to reach the smallest city in Britain. When we reached St David’s we were a little disappointed and instead of stopping too long decided that we had passed a couple of interesting spots on the way and would prefer to head back to those. So we turned the car round and headed a little bit further down the A487 to Solva. Lower Solva (to be accurate) lies at the bottom of the ravine at the mouth of the river Solva on the north side of St Bride’s Bay.

We parked in the harbour carpark and walked down the A487 stopping in the various galleries and the three story gift shop(!) but the highlight of this short stop was Sunday Lunch at the Harbour Inn. A traditional carvery was served with a good selection of vegetables. The girls were given a little bag with colouring pens, a puzzle book and a pack of cards for playing snap as a gift with their meal. But the pièce de résistance was the desert: salted caramel profiteroles. I will leave it to your imagination but if you are ever in the vicinity I would highly recommend popping in and sampling them for yourself.

Before heading back to the caravan we made one more stop: Carew Castle. A magnificent castle it is currently being restored by the National Park Authority and you can certainly see the work that they have done so far but how much they still have to go. Unfortunately we didn’t know about it until we happened to pass by and thus we had missed out on all the half-term events that they had put on all week. Nevertheless the girls still had a good time (despite the rain) mainly due to the laminated eye-spy leaflets that they were given on arrival. It made Éowyn especially ask questions about the castle and about the items that we were trying to find. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of the bats (there are 11 species that roost in the castle) that make this a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Neither did we have time to visit the adjacent mill, the only tidal mill in Wales. Next time.

And so before you knew it and before we were ready the holiday was over. We had a thoroughly good time in Pembrokeshire and would definitely return to the area and possibly even the same caravan park. It helps that we were lucky with the weather but there were a lot of attractions in the area for children that even without the weather we could have found things to do.

I apologise that this is a bit of an epic (indeed it is the longest write up on the site), but perhaps you can understand now why I split it into two updates. However, news in the Bagnall household isn’t over and expect another update before the week is out. Meanwhile there are plenty of photos below to balance the prose.

Peace and Love

Baggie