Tropical downpour

Causes courtyard to flood. Mum has to clear the drain.

Xmas 3

Xmas 2

Xmas 1

Lunch

Xmas preparations

Mum is cooking, toby is teaching mikayla how to play 21. She is almost 4 so we think she ready

On the deck

Aagh wombarra

Strange fog

The opera house seemed to not turn out. I think you have to pay a license fee to the nsw gov to take a photo. Technology!

I quite like it here

Baby jarrah

Came for lunch and met a bear

We will in for a walk anyway

Budgies on toby

Anabel has 2 little Budgies. Oh ah me hearties

Do the Milkshake

In thirroul with alex and 2 very large tree. It is raining and the temp has plummetted.

Back in the club

On the way to wombarra. Nice big plate of pretzells. Had a lovely day with sonya and alethea. Say that the 780 has finally flown. Well done rob!

Theo birthday

At the hog breathe cafe. Better than no breath at all

A p a 06

We got here

We arrived in Australia, Dad met us at the arrival gate, all very happy.  Anna had takena bit of amystery tour around the new one way system and met us in the baggage hall.  Madeleine and Henry also there and I suppose all the other people in the baggage hall got to see a lovely family reunion.  Anna and I went via the Morningside fruit barn to buy a case of mangoes and 2 bottles of champagne and we went to mum and dads to get stuck in.  There was a bun, and cups of tea and the Kate and Kent came around with the vivacious Mikayla and her trusty sidekick Joshua, and the Gerard and Mel drove up from the coast with the suntanned Jess Ben and Laura.  It felt like we had never been away.
In theafternnon, off to Mike and Kate's stunning new home/mansion.  The kids decided that they wanted to move in and indeed Matilda has not been since since (2 nights) A really lovely party with a bbq, photos taken from a top top balcony.  Lovely to feel the love.

Monday started early for me at 3.00am, to get the most out of the time here I am starting early, so by the time we went out for a swim at 8.30 it felt like lunch time.  We then went off to Anna's and then around to Hawthorne to visit Andrea and Philippa and then back to mum and dads for a stew and a late night (7.45pm)
Today we are off to the Museum of modern art to see the Pan Pacific trieniel (it was on just before we left for the UK 3 years ago, and great to be able to keep off.  Sonya and Alethea will meet us there.  Yippee

Lounge frenzy

We finally checked in- 25 mins. The kids were all in separate seats around the plane. So it took a while to sort that out. So here we are, eating as much as possible. We will be in Brisbane in about 24 hours.

Checking in

Mysterious seat allocation in code share airlines

Today I decided to attempt to get our seats organised for the trip.  As feared, our flight is the dreaded code share with BA.  So of course the qantas people are powerless to tell us anything about it at all.  They will sell us tickets, but not know what kind of plane it is or in fact anything at all about it.  They cannot even provide me with the phone number of BA.

It seems that BA have this new rule which means that you can request seats more than 24 hours in advance ... if you pay £20.  Except that we seem to have been allocated seats without the fee.  No one can explain it, or tell me whether it is the fire escape row (Harry is obviously not used to economy travel any more so feels that he will be unable to sit in a 'normal' seat).  Mysteriously, the children are on a separate booking reference to Harry and I, this seems eccentric, but there are no reasons why this has been done.  It is just the way things are.

I am now gearing up to call BA and getting ready for them to tell me that as I am qantas customer, they will not be able to divulge any information at all to me.  I can expect to be put in special seats where no flight attendant will come, and there will be no in-flight entertainment for us. (the system will be broken for those 2 rows - this has happened to me before).

I am fairly sure that we will get on the plane on Friday night, but it is harder than you think.

And now it is really freezing

It is hard to believe that this time next week, we shall be in Brisbane.  I suppose that it will be way too hot.  But what is wrong with that?  From this perspective, it seems just fine.  Today has been miserable without stopping, rain and rain and more rain.  Yesterday started out the same, Toby (who has been hankering after some shutters for his bedroom windows) said that he did not feel that he needed shutters anymore as you can have winter instead!  That's the attitude, i said.  But it cleared up testerday and was really quite a nice afternoon.  Not today. 

Rudy the dog has gone to stay with Harry's parents. They took him this morning on their way back home (they were here for the weekend) and we will not see him for a month.  matilda cried and there was a lot of last minute patting and cuddling.  After the dog bed was put in the car, Rudy seemed to be moping in the kitchen - I thought that he was sad, but as soon as Dick said ok we'll go, he leapt up and ran out to the car and jumped into the bed!  Happy as anything.  I had not been feeling all that sad really as I was secretly looking forward to a month without vacuuming up dog hair, but I suddenly realised that I will miss him.  Apparently he was very good in the car and has just moved into his new accomodation.  Maybe he will not want to come home. 

Toby has his first judo grading on Saturday, but part of the award should go tot he mother who sat there all day.  He loves judo and will hear no talk of judo practitioners just liking rolling around on the ground hugging each other.  That is a 'move' he says.  Ok say I.  So as soon as we can find the registration book that we received 2 weeks ago and must have for life, he can get his stripes.  This excitement follows hot on the heels of his first competition.  It turns out that him and his 2 friends that he started with are all the same weight so could all be in the same division.  there were just the 3 of them and they were so evenly matched that they had to do the competion twice to resolve it.  The club are delighted to have 3 such keen new boys.  Toby ended up with the silver medal and could hardly have been happier.  he even wore the medal into the farm shop on the way home (I think he thought that it would deter potential muggers).

Winter has come

We woke up today to a thick frost. Hard to even open the car doors. But it is December now, so perhaps it is time. Luckily, we will only have 10 days of it until we move into full summer in Brisbane.  On the way to school, the kids were saying how it will be great to get a tan and I reminded them that they will be so covered up with hats and shirts and sun-screen, they will probably be even whiter when they come home.  A look of general incredulity came across Miss 10 who always knows best.  Mr 12 doesn't care if he does not know best, as he says  'I'm a kid, i'm supposed to be dumb'  We won't bother to quiz Mr almost 15 because we know where that will go. 

It is a shame that none of the sunshirts we own will still fit so we will have to waste valuable time keeping covered up from the sun out of the sun. 

Theo went to a youth group last night.  As I was driving back from girl guides with matilda, she was going on about what they would be doing at youth group, attempting to be a bit sarcastic about them (compared to girl guides which is fab) she was saying it will probably be all biblical and then got stuck because she realised that she really did not know anything about youth groups at all.  She said 'help me out here mum, I am drying up', She seems to often be talking like some sozzled old school comedian these days.  She often has a bit of a look of Ronnie Barker about her.  (She appreciates a spoonerism greatly)  She is practising telling jokes with a straight face.  I am practising reacting with a laughing face.  A couple of weeks ago she went to the 'Schools Prom' copncert at the Royal Albert Hall.  They got back to the school at 11.30pm and was so hyped up that she could not sleep.  So we had a hot choclate a bagel and she told jokes.  I wanted to take out the batteries.

The chantrys

The most spectacular place

Autumn leaves

This is my walk. Really leafy and misty today. Also lots of mushrooms.

Lunch at the percy arms

Like normal workers, we in un the pub when the job is done.

Painting matilda's room

Lime green. But it is quite pale.

Holiday in Swanage

The kitchen staff at the Swanage Youth Hostel were astounded at the amount of food that Theo could eat in the all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast.  They had a wide choice and it was all very nice.  My brother Gerard once was serving Spaghetti Bolognese to Theo when he was 11 and theo kept saying load more on and Gerard kept loading.  Gerard bet him $50 that he would not be able to eat it all and lost the bet.  It was a stunning amount of food and Theo was and still is very skinny.  $50 is a lot of money to give to an 11 year old but eventually Gerard paid up.  I do not think that anyone has ever challenged Theo to an eating competition since.  The Swanage YHA may change their rules.
Swanage is the perfect holiday place, the weather was terrific (see the photos down the page).  The beaches are very nice and there are fossils in the rocks that you are encouraged to find.  We hada  fun time picking up slabs of rock and prising apart the layers to reveal ancient shells.  While there, a new lot of rock fell down (luckily noone hurt) and people rushed to the scene to look for dinosaurs.  I suppose that is why it is a good place to go, the cliffs are constantly falling down revealing new old stuff.  We came home with quite a haul and now have to decide what to do with it.  Currently it is in two boxes in the hall way.  We need a cabinet for these curiousities.

Lunch in trafalgar square

Up in london for the day. Brought our own food.

Old harry rocks.

We are lucky enough to be here on our own. Because it is quite early. The mist has just lifted, hopefully another lovely day.

Lulworth cove

Harry and old harry rocks

Winchester

Autumn at wisley

The last days of summer.

This See cosmos has been spectacolar all summer. We grew it from seed. I have bought some new plants for winter, but seems a shame to pull this up.

Birthday flowers

Stil going strong a week later. The scent is amazing.

The horse god.

He graciously accepts all attention.

The aga

Coming into its own now it is getting cold.

A little trip to Ikea

I went with my friend S to Ikea today, she wanted to go last week - and in fact did go but agreed to go again today with me.  This is a good thing because she knew what lane to be in in the very big one way system that you must go through.  We went in her tiny car.  Obviously we are not going to buy anything too big.  Or are we???

After the rigours of the long drive to Croydon (a broken down truck) we thought we would have an early lunch to give us the energy that we were going to need to tackle such a very big shop.  We both had gravlax in a 2-for-1 offer.  This is just the start of the bargains, I thought.  It was nice.  Just as we were considering whether we would top up the bottomless coffees, an announcement was made from the loudspeakers that a 'technical problem' had arisen and we would have to evacute the building.  We had not had the opportunity to marvel at even one 'room' yet. We all trooped in a surprisingly orderly fashion down the stairs (why no panic I wondered). I carried a baby who silently ignored me, but the mother was grateful as she had the other one. It would be kind of fun to have a child who silently ignored you and I briefly I considered keeping it.

It was quite cold outside milling near the staff quite a good distance from the building, which is dwarfed by 2 very large old brick chimneys.  After a while, we noticed that although the staff had all walked safely away from the building, most of the customers that were not driving off, were hanging around the entrance.  Nobody made any attempt to get the hangers-around to move further away.  I found this very disturbing indeed.   S and I wondered if one of our husbands had organised the evacuation ... but he underestimated our staying power.  We were out for about 45 mins. We never found out what the problem was, although one staff member did say that this happens every other week as people attempt to steal expensive rugs by taking them out the fire door.  No wonder there was no panic on the exit.

This reminded me of my visit to Jane Austen's house where I accidentally opened a fire door, setting off an almighty loud alarm.  The volunteer who had to come and free me from the booby trap told me that they had had to put the alarm on because the previous year someone had attempted to steal Jane's desk by sneaking it out the fire exit.  Imagine.  As it is such a tiny little thing it could probably easily fit in any micro car.  It is even smaller than the tiny laptop desks that ikea sell!

So we were eventually back in and pushing trolleys, making excuses as to why our own homes are not as fabulous as the Ikea versions (something to do with moving all the time and always having the furniture that was perfect for 3 houses ago and now stuck with it).  You also have to marvel at the cheapness of Ikea - especially the classic lack table at 4.99.  S reckons she paid more than this 20 years ago.  I bought some things including an almost angle poised lamp for 11.99 and a felt thing called a 'charging station' where we will put the mobile phones , gameboys, ipods etc on a shelf in the study - if I can just clear some space. 

We were allowed to have a top-up coffee for free since the evacuation meant that we had missed this earlier. 

We ended up with a full trolley load of stuff between us, including a plant, several cushions, a couple of giant photo frames and a biggish basket and easily fitted it all into the tardis-like micro car (that already had several fold up chairs and about 25 eco-friendly bags in it).  We picked up Matilda on the way home and jammed her and her school bag in as well.  To her amazement.

Then home to look around my house and wonder what would happen if we completely started again, how fabulous it would all be.  Especially that laptop desk.  With a laptop.... It never ends, does it?

Horror in a minor key

I find the idea of ghosts or vampires thrilling rather than actually scary.  I suppose that most people would agree that they would much rather be thrilled by the spookieness of a vampire boyfriend than the sort of thing that seems to regularly be happening to me lately, things always seem to work out, just not the way I thought that they would.
Take Tuesday for an example (and this is only an example), I had a pretty full day but, I thought, thanks to careful planning it be ok. I even made a thermos of coffee.
Here is the plan: 8.25 - take kids to school (15 minute drive); 8.50-9.00am vacuum car at petrol station; 9.20-10.20 pilates; 11.15 meet American friend at Heathrow; 12.00-2.30pm lunch with R and her friend; 3.45-3.55pm parent teacher conference for M.  It all fitted perfectly with just enough travel time.
What could go wrong?
First up, get the kids to school on time: no brainer thanks to getting bags packed the night befeor (Yea) except for wrestling the dog out of the car as I would not be coming back after the drop off - He is a big exciteable dog and he loves coming to school, I think he enjoys the exquisite sadness of the kids getting out one at a time and the realisation that it is just me and him for most of the day.
Next up, a trip to the petrol station to vacuum out the car as  R really did not need to see all that dirt.  You have to queue to buy a token.  There was only 2 people serving and the 2 people in front of me were buying trolley loads of shopping and ordering coffees as well,  aaarrrggghh.  Finally get the token and try to clean the carpet.  Why is car carpet so hard to vacuum? As I was working on the front passenger side, I realised that the satnav was not in the car as it had been on Sunday.  This means that I was going to have to go home to find it - I would be late for pilates.  aaarrrggghhhh. With 45 seconds to go I decide to do the boot as well (it is an estate car) as my friend may put her bag there....  I discovered that I had parked on top of the airline that a previous customer had left carelessly all over the ground and a lady was trying to pump up her tyres and was muttering to herself about me.  I do not know if I was supposed to apologise to her, but I didn't.  I just thought the best thing to do was to move on quickly.  So I did move on quickly, people were staring at me and I thought that they must be thinking 'that is the sort of peron who uses the vacuum cleaner at the service station'.  It is about a 20 minute drive home,  people at bus stops were staring at me.  I became gradually aware that things were not quite right in the car and eventually I realised that the boot was open.  aaaarrgggghhh.  Luckily nothing had fallen out.
I got back home and could not find the satnav, tried to call H to ask where he had hidden it, but he is unavailable.  Just will have to use my natural sense of direction to navigate to the place where I am taking R.  Hoped she would have phone number of her colleague that we would be visiting.  The dog looked at me like I was the meanest person for not letting him come on the school run, I made up for it by asking my neighbour if she would take him out for a little walk at lunch time.  She could.  Yea.
Dash out to pilates, late, park in a deceptively giant puddle so get feet wet in the stupid carpark in Shere.  aaarrrggghhh.  Rush into the village hall hoping that I had missed some of the more killer exercises only to find that the hall has been turned into an 'Incident Centre' as there had been a failure of a water pipe that had in turn blown out a gas pipe and water had 'got into' the gas.  ok this is bad - but what about pilates, I need it today.  It was in the school hall over the road instead.  Dash across (had missed the hard exercise). During the oblique lifts, heard a small explosion outside followed by a bit of yelling. Schadenfreude. Yea.
Rush from pilates back to car (step over puddle) and pour myself a coffee from the flask and then watch it spill as I drive over the horrendously rutted carpark and down the little bit of lane with the most potholes in England onto the proper road.  As thermos flask has now rolled under back seat, no opportunity of easily re-filling so gulp small bit and hope it will get me to the traffic jam that is sure to be on the M25. 
Of course there was no traffic jam that day - so I arrived at Terminal 1 at 11.05 and feel like the pilot of the plane that has started 30 mins late but will 'make up the time' on the journey.  Grab my phone so I can call R only to find that it is not working (a problem with the battery connection)  aarrrggghh.  Although I did have the number on a small bit of paper so thought that if necessary I could beg off a stranger. Yea.  It took a little while to find the way out of the carpark.  Heathrow terminal 1 is extremely compact so you have to be attentive, lots of  concrete buildings that even when there are not a lot of cars, it still looks like there are.  The Arrivals board says that R's plane has 'Baggage in Hall' status so plan to stand and wait rather than buy coffee at Costa, after going to the Ladies.  But while walking to the toilets, actually see R in queue for ATM machine.  Hooray.  I really have made up the time.  Turns out that she even has good directions to rendez-vous.  There are no traffic problems on M4 so arrive on time at seafood restaurant.  Yea. I had mussles.  They came in a pretty big bucket with a lid that converted into a scrap bucket.  My meal took up a lot more space that the others, especially when they brought out the finger bowl. I only spilled a little bit on myself.  We had a nice time chatting at lunch.  Yea.

I was a bit anxious about the trip home without the satnav.  So set off a little apprehensively - but although there were approximately 250 roundabouts, I drove straight to Guildford - or as straight as possible while doing roundabouts.  In fact it was 3pm when I reached Guildford and so I had 45 mins to fill in so decided to go to the library and pick up the Stephanie Plum book that I had ordered - number 15 in the series and brand new. Yea.  I arrived at school ready to bask in the reflected glory of M's parent teacher meeting only to find that it is actually on next week.  aaaaarrrrggggggghhhhhhhh.  So had to wait for 30 mins for netball training to finish.
This to me is a horror story, you have to think on your feet and make small changes to what was a pretty good plan.  Then you catch up and relax a bit and so are once again caught out thinking you have it all under control.

Mobile Phone Mystery solved

After reading a lot of detection fiction over the last year or so, I like a little bit of mystery in my life.  Just this week a few have cropped up. 
The first was when it seemed like Harry's car was eating my mobile phone piece by piece.  The back of it falls off regularly and I snap it back on - maybe 20 times a day.  On Monday it fell off in Harry's car that I was driving while he was in Algeria.  No one could find it.  I actually shook out all the footrests and removed all the bits of stuff that have accumulated over the last year or so.  looked down the sides of the seats.  Theo even shone a torch.  No luck.  So the phone is not looking good with all its bits exposed like that.  Every time I got in the car i would look again.  Then on Tuesday, the battery disappeared.  It was then a real mystery.  I thought that a child (Toby?) was tricking me, but he assured me (over pain of no more runescape) that this was not so.  So double dilemma.  The phone is quite necessary now with the kids all over the place at different times and stuff.  I was wondering which kind of detection strategy would work the best when it came to me that I was going to have to go where no person has been before - under the carpet.  Sure enough, there they were.  Together.  How they got there is very hard to understand, but luckily I reinserted everything and it worked again. 
The next mystery was a missing person.  Toby.  Caught the bus home, rang to say that evil bus driver from hell had refused to stop at his stiop and so he wa about 2 miles away and walking home.  Had cleared instructions with Theo as to direction to take.  As it was raining I thought i would go and pick him up.  Nowhere to be seen.  Was not answering own phone so deduction was either a. kidnapped; b. phone out of charge; c. lost phone.  Most likely were b. and c. 
Came home and had a think and a quiet worry.  Could he have walked the wrong way (possible). Or could he have 'stopped off' somewhere.  Decided on another trip up the road and found him at the end of the street.  It turned out that he had called into the Percy Arms for a drink.  Water with ice.
At least the mysteries are more Stephaie Plum that Lisbeth Salender.

Helping with the homework

We had a very busy afternoon yesterday doing the homework.  It is such a family affair for us.  All the kids are learning French at the moment and the thing that gets to me about it is that they all seem to be learning the same thing.  When do they make any progress past being able to say the name of a list of about 20 professions and that they are annoyed with someone.  Is that all there is to learning french?
Matilda is writing a poem (again).  It seems that Theo is always writing a brochure about something, and Matilda is always writing a poem.  Matilda really likes writing a poem and she is a fast and intuitive rhymer - although gratuitous (for distance yesterday she was rhyming 'fresh' with 'Bangladesh' , not because it makes sense for the poem, but because it was the only word she can think of).  I suppose you can buy a rhyming dictionary to help in these emergency situations, but we were on our own.  In the end she decided to use 'stress'.  She was not really happy as it is not an exact rhyme.
Toby continues on writing his 'Journey through Africa'  He sure has picked some obscure places to journey through.  He thought that it would be neat to write the bits about the countries where they speak French in French, except that as he can really only write about job descriptions and whether or not he is annoyed with his brother/sister/ friend or parent he would have to stick to English.  He started out with 'The sun rose over Africa'  which is a great first line, but has been used elsewhere I believe.  How much do I intervene?  He was also writing 3 paragraphs in the first person about a travellers impression of pentecost.  Again it would have been nice to bring in the languages, but one of the few professions he has not learnt yet in French is crucifix maker (I think that is what his character was supposed to be), so same old same old.

Magic Tricks

Toby has recently perfected the trick of making a coin disappear from the back of his fist and then re-appear from behind my ear.  He has had the patter down for about 6 months, also the re-direction stuff, but there is nothing like the sound of a coin hitting the floor to make you notice that he has failed in the 3rd skill involved!  So he is going one step better now and just pro-actively finding coins from the back of an ear.  It is very funny to see how delighted he is with this trick, and I am having to make sure that the coin is clean.
It is a shame tht the dedication that he has shown in developing this trick is harder to replicate in other parts of his life, for example homework.  I just have a box of tissues ready whenever he eventually starts the homework, some for him, some for Harry.  And a gin and tonic for me.
What I am really hoping will happen is that he will learn to pull homework out from behind his ear, although on second thoughts he is quite successful in pulling it out of my brain!

Surrey Country Fair and Horse Ploughing Competition

I was told about this event by the bell ringers who assured me that it was a great day out.  Further reflection would have made me think that maybe there would be less to it than the family admittance price of £22.00 would suggest.    Although admittedly, the horse ploughing (and tractor ploughing as well) competition was fascinating, especially for Theo, him being the only teenager walking around the huge field looking at tractors and all the differnt sorts of ploughs.  Spotting a judge (carrying a clipboard and wearing a tie though only showing 2 teeth in his whole mouth) I asked what are the criteria for really good ploughing.  They are: entry, exit, ins and outs regularity and a few others.  Previously I had not known that there was such a type of competition, but in fact this was a heat that would send its champions off to the British national competition, and then off to Europe!  Perusing the programme later, I noticed that the prizes were in the realms of the low tens of pounds.  So everything is in the glory.

We then went to get lunch and were surprised at the amount of money we were asked to pay for a cheeseburger meal deal. So all our money was pretty much gone with entry and lunch (why did we not bring a picnic?, or a lot more money?)  The event was held in the grounds of Loseley House.  A stately home near our house, the house is beautiful and so it is a pretty place to go, the weather was fab so lots of people were there, wandering around looking at market stalls and watching the obligatory falconry display, and fly fishing lessons on the lawn.  Then there was the dog agility demonstrations, including the area final showcasing the best 30 dogs (out of 750) and their trainers, most of whom seemed to be over 70!  I think the event should be re-named Senior agility as these ladies were running around with their dogs, coaching them through all the different obstacles hardly puffing at all.  Matilda plans to enrol Rudi, thereby ensuring a long healthy life for herself.  Many people were watching, although this could be because they also had spent all their money on lunch.  It was so warm, the only thing that indicated that it was not the middle of summer was that the sun was quite low in the sky. 

It is quite extrordinary how much English people love their dogs, and when they go to something like this they always take their dogs, and most of the dogs are different.  People are all dressed identically, but they accessorise with their dogs.

The next year...

As it is now more than a year since the last posting, there is no point going back too much, here is a photo covering the recent trip to France. As always, we have not taken some really good photos, and the ones we do have feature rather too many mountains. So here it is.


This is where we camped in Gavarnie, a village in the Pyrenees - a mountain range which forms the border between France and Spain. Gavarnie is mostly a place for day trippers - up to 2 million people a year go there. I would think that most of them are either in July/August or January/February so I suppose that works out at at about 100 000 people a week which would tally with the crowds we saw in our week there. One rainy day seeing people walk out of the village was like watching a crowd leave a football match. This is not to say that the place is horrible, it is not. It is staggeringly beautiful and the surrounding mountains are so huge that people look quite insignificant. We had an excellent guide book from which we did the 4 walks that it recommends in the area. What a great guide it was too. (They have quite a lot of other ones too). Here are some other photos of Gavarnie to get your fancy tickled.



The thing that I like the best about walking in France is the community feel - there are people of all ages, some really quite old and some very very young. We all walk along together. There were not a lot of English people at all - I suppose most English people do not want to see ice in summer in a different country (unless it it tinkling in a glass) when they can easily be cold at home!
But we loved it. Toby had a great time shushing down the ice like a champion.




Matilda achieved a dream of hers to ride a donkey (this had previously been a private dream, unexpressed as it seemed so impossible). Here she is on 'Charlotte', shortly after Charlotte took off at a gallop across a tiny bridge to return home. It was a miracle that Matilda did not fall off, and the donkey was only stopped by a very brave woman jumping in front of her and waving her arms authoritatingly. The donkey man had said that we were not to let go of the reins, but we assumed that was a standard disclaimer... Needless to say, Theo's donkey, although called Flash only moved if we wacked it. Toby had a nice one called Valerie.
We went up the river to the hotel (there is always a hotel in France, no matter how remote the place - and it serves a full 3 course lunch with wine)
So paranoid was I on the way back that I did not let go of the reins once, even though it was several miles and the donkey jogged the whole way. I have never been so tired ever.
The weather deteriorated at the end of the week badly causing the boys tent to flood. They thought it was hilarious and enjoyed sleeping in the car. Matilda was extremely jealous that she had to stay in the tent. As the boys tent had been rather a hotch potch owing to the mismatching fly (too small) and the hole in the groundsheet (the one from the nesting turtle on lady Musgrave island 15 years ago), it was no surprise that there would be trouble.
Other than walking, we ate crepes, trying 6 of the restaurants in Gavarnie and liking them all. Toby has been inspired to redecorate his bedroom as a kind of mountain hut and so far we have got brown themed bedclothes and hung up a snowboard. He is attempting to catch some big game ...