Sometimes a physical change of scenery can help you clear your head and see things clearly and that's exactly what happened to me yesterday. I was lucky enough to be invited, along with a handful of other bloggers, to visit Yeo Valley - home of yummy yoghurt and some equally yummy farmers (well, so says their TV adverts!) - to find out more about the company behind all the yumminess and their way of doing things. When I recently wrote here about wanting to use my blog to find out more about the people and things that make me smile this trip was exactly the sort of ... read more
The Great British Walking Challenge
"There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing" That's a statement that's been used an awful lot over the last month in our house. The weather has been awful and wet for most of April, but that's not deterred Little Miss C and I from heading out on foot and exploring the local parks and other outdoor spaces. I was therefore completely delighted when I received an invitation to take part in a guided walk as part of Living Streets' The Great British Walking Challenge. If you're someone who travels by foot then you may ... read more
Mrs C went to BlogCamp
After telling you that Mrs C was going to BlogCamp I guess it would only be polite for me to tell you how I got on there. I will warn you now that I make no apologies for this post entering into the technical SEO territory as for me that was one of the highlights of the trip! Yes, I know I'm a geek, but still... For those of you that have not heard of BlogCamp then let me tell you that if you're a blogger here in the UK then you should make it your business to know about BlogCamp and get yourself on their mailing list so that you can attend a future one. Run by the lovely ... read more
If you go down in the woods today…
... it'll probably be quite quiet - well it is chucking it down with rain as is typical for a Bank Holiday Monday! Luckily that wasn't the case on Saturday though when The Wick was full of children all running around as part of an Easter Hunt in aid of the Woodland Trust. Instead of having to find eggs, children instead had to collect five differently coloured tokens that were distributed across the site and then they could trade them in for a chocolate treat - all for the fantastic sum of just 50p per child. As expected Little Miss C and her trusty rabbit took the ... read more
Bekonscot Model Village and Railway
Mr C has chosen the most perfect week to have off work this week; day after day of unseasonably warm weather and extra long sunny days following the clock change last weekend. Days like these are designed for old fashioned family days out and that's exactly what we did today. Bekonscot Model Village and Railway is in the lovely Buckinghamshire town of Beaconsfield, just off the M40; only about 40 minutes from St Albans. Originally started in 1929 the model village contains pretty much everything you can imagine - shops, houses, sports fields, boating lakes, harbours, a mine, a zoo, a ... read more
A castle with a slide?
One thing that Little Miss C likes to do before going to sleep at night is have a debrief on her day. Before her language developed into proper words and phrases she would often "chatter" for up to an hour in her cot before falling asleep. Now she will often talk about her day whilst having her evening bath and it's fascinating to hear what things she has picked up on as highlights of her day. Yesterday we were in Lincoln for a family meal to celebrate my mum's 70th birthday. LMC was obviously excited to see her garndparents and auntie and uncle, but that's not what she ... read more
The National Trust respond
Following on from my post on Monday I have to give full marks to the National Trust for the speed with which they have responded to me. Not long after 9am on the Tuesday morning I had received an email holding response from the Wimpole Estate and that morning both the Estate and the National Trust centrally had also responded to me on Twitter. At just 2pm there was a full response from the General Manager at the Wimpole Estate which I include below. Here at Wimpole Estate we take our position of sustainability very seriously; whether this is the continual conservation work we do in both the ... read more
Let down by plastic
We made the most of the last day of Mr C's Chrsitmas holidays today to take Little Miss C along to Home Farm at the National Trust's Wimpole Estate. It is somewhere that we have visited several times before and LMC loved all the animals that she visited on the farm. On this visit she was also old enough (and mobile enough) to make the most of the ride on tractors and also all the playground facilities. For her it was a perfect day out. We enjoyed the farm visit as much as she did, but there was unfortunately one bit of our visit that left us feeling let down. We chose to eat lunch at ... read more
That bit in-between
We're just drawing to the end of that slightly strange period between Christmas and New Year that people often don't quite know what to do with. Here we've been simply enjoying time as a family of three. After nearly a week of get-togethers with extended family we're making the most of the simple things for a while. Amongst playing with the lovely toys hat Father Christmas brought for LMC (more on those later!) there's been plenty of Christmas TV to catch up on, trips to some local (free) attractions and also making the most of the adorable Jemima Puddleduck ... read more
Treasures from Trash
With it being holiday season Little Miss C and I are really doing the days out thing at the moment and our adventures this week took us to Luton and more specifically Stockwood Discovery Centre. If you're local and have not been before then it is a lovely free day out. The museum is vast, covering a wide range of exhibits from farming machinery to horse-drawn carriages, and there's also a lovely cafe, playground, grounds and the wider Country Park to explore. The reason that took me to Stockwood this time was having heard about the Treasures from ... read more