We've missed out on or delayed a number of trips and holidays over the last year and a half for, you know, pandemic-related reasons. So this summer, in addition to our trip to Lichfield, we arranged a series of back-to-back expeditions.
1. Alton Towers
The first leg of our holiday saw us spend a long weekend at Alton Towers, staying over at one of their themed hotels in between days at the water park and theme park:
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Children playing outside the CBeebies Land Hotel
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A muppet assists with hotel checkin.
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Kids in a decorated elevator.
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A rabbit... playing a saxophone?
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The Windmill restaurant at the CBeebies Land Hotel
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The kids on an enormous chair.
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Ruth, JTA and the kids eat dinner.
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Children watching a show in the hotel.
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Bing the rabbit at the hotel.
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JTA and the kids relaxing in our Octonauts-themed hotel room.
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Mini-golf game in progress.
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Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids at the water park.
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The kids by the pond between the hotels.
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Kids at the "frog" fountains near the entrance to Alton Towers' theme park.
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Riding the In The Night Garden boat ride.
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Ubercorn poses for a photo with a fan.
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The Octonauts rollercoaster.
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Duggee at Alton Towers
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The kids learn from a Mr. Tumble screen.
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Dan and JTA wear masks indoors.
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Charlie and Lola photo opportunity.
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Imprisoned nose-picker.
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The kids drive through the Postman Pat ride.
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Congo River Rapids ride..
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Ride photo from the Congo River Rapids
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Ride photo from the Runaway Mind Train.
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Ride photo from Duel
2. Darwin Forest
The second leg of our holiday took us to a log cabin in the Darwin Forest Country Park for a week:
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Feeding a sheep.
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Rope climbing.
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Kid carrying huge stick.
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Log cabin in the Landal Darwin Forest.
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Lounging on the sofa with a CBeebie toy.
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Ruth hops across balancing logs in the Darwin Forest.
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Hanging upside down.
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Kids different ways up.
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Dan on a climbing wall.
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Fairy houses in a wood.
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Running around on a football pitch.
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Soft play dome.
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Soft play slides.
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Dan and the kids on a racing slide.
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Mini-golf in the Darwin Forest.
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Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids outside St. Elphin's Park Retirement Village.
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Stirring tea.
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Wiping with a napkin.
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Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids outside the Devil's Arse.
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The kids visit a restored ropemaker's hut in the Devil's Arse.
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Ropemaking demonstration.
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Family down a cave.
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Dan, Ruth and the kids in a boat down a cave.
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Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids above the "bottomless pit" in Speedwell Cavern.
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Ice cream.
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The kids asleep.
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Dan, geocaching.
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Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids at the Crazy Cat Lady escape room.
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Dan drinking from a champagne flute.
3. Preston
Kicking off the second week of our holiday, we crossed the Pennines to Preston to hang out with my family (with the exception of JTA, who had work to do back in Oxfordshire that he needed to return to):
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Boy eating a crumpet alongside a bowl of fruit.
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Boy lying on Dan, waving, eating an ice lolly.
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Children running out of a shed.
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Ruth provides tickling.
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A girl with felt-tip whiskers drawn on to look like a cat.
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Dan takes a picture of Ruth taking a picture of the kids.
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A woman and a girl press their faces together and rub noses.
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A woman and a girl; the girl is face-painted as a cat, the woman has bit of the face paint rubbed off onto her.
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Two adults and a child using mobile phones and tablets.
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A woman and a girl outdoors looking at their mobile devices.
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A woman and a girl on a cycleway, holding hands, between trees and weeds.
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Sarah and Ruth pull strange pouty faces together.
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My sisters wrestle(?) on the floor.
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Becky lies on the floor, surrounded by/covered in children.
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Dan and Sarah hold their heads with their hands, at a strange angle.
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Hedgehog on a garden path.
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A boy, holding a GPS receiver, runs across a park lawn.
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Two children hold a geocache.
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A girl does sit-ups in an outdoor gym.
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A boy on a cross-trainer.
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Sarah helps a child on a zipline.
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A boy enjoys an ice cream at a park cafe.
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A boy runs in the distance.
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A girl runs with a small dog on a lead.
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Jemma blows out candles on a birthday cake.
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Ruth photographs a boy on a pontoon.
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Ruth photographs her 4-year-old as he stands on a pontoon dock.
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Ducks approach a girl on a pontoon bridge.
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Children run away into a meadow.
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A boy runs away from two adults.
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A girl shouts with excitement as she crosses a wobbly bridge.
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A boy concentrates hard as he crosses a wobbly bridge.
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A boy climbs a two-rope crossing, balancing on the bottom rope while holding the top rope.
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A boy shouts from the top of a grassy knoll near a car park.
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Children petting an English Longhorn cattle.
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Two adults and two children pose with a wooden sculpture of a doe lying down.
4. Forest of Bowland
Ruth and I then left the kids with my mother and sisters for a few days to take an "anniversary mini-break" of glamping in the gorgeous Forest of Bowland:
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Dan and Ruth outside a wooden "pod" glamping structure.
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A river snakes through a lightly-wooded valley.
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Dan strokes a large brown horse wearing a red jacket.
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A horse wearing a zebra-print jacket.
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Ruth and Dan at the trig point at the summit of Pendle Hill.
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Steve Taylor wearing a bathtub and climbing Pendle Hill.
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Dan and Ruth enjoy cocktails in a beer garden.
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Ruth plays a pipe organ.
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Dan, sweaty, at the top of a rise.
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Orange-red river water beneath Dan's feet.
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Ruth and Dan eat (fake) duck pancakes outside their lodge.
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A fire pit rages and sparks.
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Dan and Ruth with the sea in the background.
(If you're interested in Steve Taylor's bathtub-carrying virtual-Everest expedition, here's his Facebook page and JustGiving profile.)
5. Meanwhile, in Preston
The children, back in Preston, were apparently having a whale of a time:
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Children pet a starfish
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Starfish with childrens' hands nearby.
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Boy in the (bones of the) mouth of a shark.
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Underwater transparent tube with fish outside and children inside.
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Child peering into a fishtank using a dome underneath it.
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Children in a VR motion simulator.
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Girl in front of a LEGO mosaic of butterfly wings.
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Kids with Lego Batman.
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Child in a lego space suit.
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Child with a contributory LEGO mosaic.
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Boy balancing on a beam at a park.
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A boy doing finger painting.
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Children play shop: a boy operates a checkout and a girl buys shopping.
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Children gardening.
6. Suddenly, A Ping
The plan from this point was simple: Ruth and I would return to Preston for a few days, hang out with my family some more, and eventually make a leisurely return to Oxfordshire. But it wasn't to be...
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Screenshot from the NHS Covid App: "You need to self-isolate."
I got a "ping". What that means is that my phone was in close proximity to somebody else's phone on 29 August and that other person subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.
My risk from this contact is exceptionally low. There's only one place that my phone was in close proximity to the phone of anybody else outside of my immediate family, that day, and it's when I left it in a locker at the swimming pool near our cabin in the Darwin Forest. Also, of course, I'd been double-jabbed for a month and a half and I'm more-cautious than most about contact, distance, mask usage etc. But my family are, for their own (good) reasons, more-cautious still, so self-isolating at Preston didn't look like a possibility for us.
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Ruth and Dan in a car, in a car park.
As soon as I got the notification we redirected to the nearest testing facility and both got swabs done. 8 days after possible exposure we ought to have a detectable viral load, if we've been infected. But, of course, the tests take a day or so to process, so we still needed to do a socially-distanced pickup of the kids and all their stuff from Preston and turn tail for Oxfordshire immediately, cutting our trip short.
The results would turn up negative, and subsequent tests would confirm that the "ping" was a false positive. And in an ironic twist, heading straight home actually put us closer to an actual COVID case as Ruth's brother Owen turned out to have contracted the bug at almost exactly the same time and had, while we'd been travelling down the motorway, been working on isolating himself in an annex of the "North wing" of our house for the duration of his quarantine.
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Barricade with signs reading "Quarantine: Zombie Outbreak"
7. Ruth & JTA go to Berwick
Thanks to negative tests and quick action in quarantining Owen, Ruth and JTA were still able to undertake the next part of this three-week holiday period and take their anniversary break (which technically should be later in the year, but who knows what the situation will be by then?) to Berwick-upon-Tweed. That's their story to tell, if they want to, but the kids and I had fun in their absence:
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Dan and his 4-year-old wearing silly hats.
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Dan and the kids on a swan boat.
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Monkey on roof of car.
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A child watches a giant tortoise try to open a gate.
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Children petting a goat.
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Girl eats half a sausage roll.
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A boy pours a juice drink onto some candy floss.
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A boy holds a GPS receiver as he walks down a lane.
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Children look around a field.
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Children hold a toy plane with "geocache airlines" written on it.
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A girl plays a kazoo.
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Children painting
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Boy with painted brown hands.
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Children in pyjamas at a breakfast table greet Robin outside the patio doors.
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A girl wearing headphones programs in Scrach. On her screen a witch is hunting for a broomstick.
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A girl wearing headphones programs in Scrach. On her screen a witch is hunting for a broomstick.
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Dan holding the Wild Wolf 3 geocache.
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Butter pies in an oven.
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A butter pie with heart-shaped pastry decorations.
8. Reunited again
Finally, Ruth and JTA returned from their mini-break and we got to do a few things together as a family again before our extended holiday drew to a close:
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A hug with Ruth.
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JTA greets the kids.
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A girl looks lost in a maize maze.
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Children playing crazy golf.
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A girl digs in a tabletop sandpit.
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A boy dives onto a trampoline.
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A girl on a carousel horse called "Annie".
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Two children crawl through a den of sticks.
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A girl hangs upside-down in a soft play area.
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Dan and Ruth with their 4-year-old.
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A girl picks gooseberries.
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Ruth and the children pick gooseberries.
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A girl looks at a strawberry.
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A boy inspects a strawberry on a vine.
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A girl pulls a face as she looks at a strawberry.
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People stand around in a garden at a barbecue.
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Dan plays with a small baby.
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Children at a picnic table in a garden.
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Adults eat barbecue food.
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A child in the smoke of a barbecue holds his hand over his eyes.
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Children play together; adults sit and talk in the background.
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Children watch as our 7-year-old plays Pokemon with Simon.
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The kids pose with a fruit-topped cake.
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Fairpoirt Convention's livestream plays on TV.
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Children dancing.
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Ruth and the kids in a heap at the end of the virtual concert.
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A fully-assembled 'hamster heaven' cage.
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Robin reverse-abseilling up a tree.
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The kids play switch while they hang in a 'nest swing'.
9. Back to work?
Tomorrow I'm back at work, and after 23 days "off" I'm honestly not sure I remember what I do for a living any more. Something to do with the Internet, right? Maybe ecommerce?
I'm sure it'll all come right back to me, at least by the time I've read through all the messages and notifications that doubtless await me (I've been especially good at the discipline, this break, of not looking at work notifications while I've been on holiday; I'm pretty proud of myself.)
But looking back, it's been a hell of a three weeks. After a year and a half of being pretty-well confined to one place, doing a "grand tour" of so many destinations as a family and getting to do so many new and exciting things has made the break feel even longer than it was. It seems like it must have been months since I last had a Zoom meeting with a work colleague!
For now, though, it's time to try to get the old brain back into work mode and get back to making the Web a better place!
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