Ile de Ré Summer Holidays 2010

In the early summers of my childhood, my Dad and Mum packed my brother Phil and I, still sleeping, into the back of our family car, with a caravan in tow, and drove us to the south of France each year.   The journeys and holidays were long and packed with some of the strongest memories I’ll keep.  Those of us lucky enough to have any Family Holiday as children will always keep those memories, and looking back on this particular branch of the Haygarth family’s trip to the Ile de Ré, I know that the beat goes on and on, and as many families do, we’ve done our own version of the full circle.

With a car packed with everything from bikes to buckets, we lifted the children from their beds at 2:30am and set off to Dover. Elsie proved that despite not knowing what the heck was going on, she could hold a pretty good conversation for a two year old in the dead of night, but we eventually got her settled by Stafford, an hour od so later.  Arriving at Dover a bit blearly eyed and checking onto the ferry was a bit of basic relief. Anything like that carries with it an irritating deadline and the need for a bit of buffer time, but at least we were there now, intact, in time, and in need of medium cappuccino with an extra shot. (more…)

Deershed Festival 2010. Family Frolics in Sunny Yorkshire

Fantastic 24 hours camping at the Deershed Festival over near Thirsk this weekend. Sandwiched between rain on Friday and Sunday, we managed to enjoy a pretty sunny day of musing and moseying to music and general arts. (more…)

Forty-and-a-half: Time to party

Having a birthday in the depths of January isn’t that good. At the butt-end of Christmas when schools have gone back and the daylight lasts about as long as dinner time, no-one feels like anything other than thinks like diets, holidays, or ending it all. When I turned 40 this January I kept it a low key affair. Not because I didn’t want to get lots of people together, but more because I didn’t want anyone to be doing it under duress. (more…)

Lily’s third fell race: The Austwick Amble

Lily did us proud yet again yesterday with what was a great run in the Austwick Amble junior race. We’d had a lovely night camping in Malham and turned up for the Austwick street fair with semi-plans to run (we’d packed the trainers etc!). (more…)

Elsie turns two

Elsie’s second birthday today – yes – it has flown by a bit hasn’t it. It generally does really, but newborn-to-two seems especially fast in children. Katie and I decided that a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme was appropriate given the fave-book status and Elsie’s hobby; eating things.
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