holiday – Dan Q

Note #26629

Cwm-yr-Eglwys, on the West coast of Wales. Time for a (bracing) swim!

Off to Pembrokeshire on holiday I’ve had to stop near Cardiff to put some more charge into the car… which provides the perfect opportunity for the doggo and I to explore a nearby sports field and take in All. The. Smells. 🐶

PortAventura

Made it through a day and a half of theme park fun with the kids. Time for a much-needed beer, then as long a sleep as circumstance will allow.

Dos Huevos

For some reason, the breakfast chef assumed that when I asked for two eggs benedict that I might want them on two separate plates. As if I WEREN’T totally planning to scoff them both myself! 😂

Hackaday

Me, hacking challenging Javascript at work: “Damn, I need a holiday.”

Me, hacking challenging Javascript on sabbatical: “Ah, so relaxing.”

Melià Barcelona Sky

Enjoying a glass of cava while the kids peer down out of the window of a Barcelona skyscraper.

Day 8 of my sabbatical. Think I’m doing this right?

Note #24813

Off to Spain! BRB.

Freedom of the Mountain

During a family holiday last week to the Three Valleys region of the French Alps for some skiing¹, I came to see that I enjoy a privilege I call the freedom of the mountain.

In black skiwear, Dan looks into the camera from a bench in the snow, his skis upright behind him. — “Mornin’. Let’s go skiing.”

The Freedom

The freedom of the mountain is a privilege that comes from having the level of experience necessary to take on virtually any run a resort has to offer. It provides a handful of benefits denied to less-confident skiers:

I usually don’t feed to look at a map to plan my next route; whichever way I go will be fine!
When I reach one or more lifts, I can choose which to take based on the length of their queue, rather than considering their destinations.
When faced with a choice of pistes (or an off-piste route), my choice can be based on my mood, how crowded they are, etc., rather than their rated difficulty.

A snow-covered Alpine glacier sandwiched into a gully of exposed rocks. — Let’s tear this up, yo.

The downside is that I’m less well-equipped to consider the needs of others! Out skiing with Ruth one morning I suggested a route back into town that “felt easy” based on my previous runs, only to have her tell me that – according to the map – it probably wasn’t!

Approaching the Peak

The kids spent the week in lessons. It’s paying off: they’re both improving fast, and the eldest has got all the essentials down and it’s working on improving her parallel turns and on “reading the mountain”. It’s absolutely possible that the eldest, and perhaps both of them, will be a better skier than me someday².

I’m not perfect, mind. While skiing backwards and filming, I misjudged the height of an arch and hit the back of the head with it… despite the child shouting to warn me! 😅

Maybe, as part of my effort to do what I’m bad at, I should have another go at learning to snowboard. I always found snowboarding frustrating because everything I needed to re-learn was something that I could already do much better and easier on skis. But perhaps if I can reframe that frustration through the lens of learning itself as the destination, I might be in a better place. One to consider for next time I hit the piste.

Footnotes

¹ Also a little geocaching and some mountainside Where’s Wally?

² Assuming snow is still a thing in ten years time.

Short-Term Blogging

There’s a perception that a blog is a long-lived, ongoing thing. That it lives with and alongside its author.¹

But that doesn’t have to be true, and I think a lot of people could benefit from “short-term” blogging. Consider:

Photoblogging your holiday, rather than posting snaps to social media
You gain the ability to add context, crosslinking, and have permanent addresses (rather than losing eveything to the depths of a feed). You can crosspost/syndicate to your favourite socials if that’s your poison..

Blogging your studies, rather than keeping your notes to yourself
Writing what you learn helps you remember it; writing what you learn in a public space helps others learn too and makes it easy to search for your discoveries later.²
Recording your roleplaying, rather than just summarising each session to your fellow players
My D&D group does this at levellers.blog! That site won’t continue to be updated forever – the party will someday retire or, more-likely, come to a glorious but horrific end – but it’ll always live on as a reminder of what we achieved.

One of my favourite examples of such a blog was 52 Reflect³ (now integrated into its successor The Improbable Blog). For 52 consecutive weeks my partner‘s brother Robin blogged about adventures that took him out of his home in London and it was amazing. The project’s finished, but a blog was absolutely the right medium for it because now it’s got a “forever home” on the Web (imagine if he’d posted instead to Twitter, only for that platform to turn into a flaming turd).

I don’t often shill for my employer, but I genuinely believe that the free tier on WordPress.com is an excellent way to give a forever home to your short-term blog⁴. Did you know that you can type new.blog (or blog.new; both work!) into your browser to start one?

What are you going to write about?

Footnotes

¹ This blog is, of course, an example of a long-term blog. It’s been going in some form or another for over half my life, and I don’t see that changing. But it’s not the only kind of blog.

² Personally, I really love the serendipity of asking a web search engine for the solution to a problem and finding a result that turns out to be something that I myself wrote, long ago!

³ My previous posts about 52 Reflect: Challenge Robin, Twatt, Brixton to Brighton by Boris Bike, Ending on a High (and associated photo/note)

⁴ One of my favourite features of WordPress.com is the fact that it’s built atop the world’s most-popular blogging software and you can export all your data at any time, so there’s absolutely no lock-in: if you want to migrate to a competitor or even host your own blog, it’s really easy to do so!

Holidays in the Age of COVID

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:

Children playing outside the CBeebies Land Hotel — The CBeebies Land hotel is… whimsical.

A muppet assists with hotel checkin. — Yes, there’s a puppeteer (somewhere) in that cabinet processing checkins.

Kids in a decorated elevator. — Even the elevators play tunes and put on a light show with every journey.

A rabbit... playing a saxophone? — It took me a while to see this rabbit as playing music, rather than, y’know… vomiting.

The Windmill restaurant at the CBeebies Land Hotel — The whimsy continues in the theming of the restaurant. Yes, that windmill turns.

The kids on an enormous chair. — Technically, this is part of one of the other (similarly whimsical) hotels on the site, but nobody seemed to mind our exploring.

Ruth, JTA and the kids eat dinner. — On at least one occasion we ate dinner in “The Library”, which turns out (disappointingly) not to be a library but a room with pictures of books on the wall.

Children watching a show in the hotel. — The hotel puts on a series of show somewhat reminiscent of an “upscale” Pontins.

Bing the rabbit at the hotel. — Bing the rabbit made me glad that the other end of this hotel room had a bar.

JTA and the kids relaxing in our Octonauts-themed hotel room. — The (Octonauts) theming of our hotel room even extended as far as the phone, TVs, and that notice they put up about towel washing. Neat.

Mini-golf game in progress. — Hole in… seven?

Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids at the water park. — For obvious reasons, we don’t have photos inside the water park. Ignore the sign, we asked permission before taking this one!

The kids by the pond between the hotels. — Befriending wildfowl is what people with kids come to theme parks for, right?

Kids at the "frog" fountains near the entrance to Alton Towers' theme park. — Yay! Frog fountains!

Riding the In The Night Garden boat ride. — The In The Night Garden Boat Ride was a particular favourite.

Ubercorn poses for a photo with a fan. — Social distancing was imposed reasonably wall, all things considered, although (as you’d expect) many fairgoers were less-disciplined than we’d have liked.

The Octonauts rollercoaster. — We spent a lot of our first day in the theme park in CBeebies Land, but we only had the patience to queue for the Octonauts rollercoaster the once.

Duggee at Alton Towers — CBeebies Land itself had a variety of shows with different characters.

The kids learn from a Mr. Tumble screen. — Makaton for “friend” is just cute. Thanks, Mr. Tumble.

Dan and JTA wear masks indoors. — On these, among the hottest days of the year, we got quite sweaty inside our masks.

Charlie and Lola photo opportunity. — I’m not sure we optimised this photo opportunity for height.

Imprisoned nose-picker. — An unrepentant nose-picker gets jail time in Mutinty Bay.

The kids drive through the Postman Pat ride. — The Postman Pat ride designer had the foresight to provide two steering wheels in case the participants weren’t good at sharing… but still provided an odd number of buttons to use to “deliver parcels” at key points during the ride.

Congo River Rapids ride.. — Later in the first day and into the second day we stepped up to more-exciting family rides, like the Congo River Rapids, and even a few thrill rides that interested only a subset of our party.

Ride photo from the Congo River Rapids — The Congo River Rapids had a tediously long queue (not least because no groups, however small, were allowed to share a boat), but at least we all got to take part together as a family.

Ride photo from the Runaway Mind Train. — The kids had to make a solemn promise to stop their bickering before they were allowed to sit together for this ride.

Ride photo from Duel — Not everybody was equally-enthusiastic about haunted house shoot-’em-up ride 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:

Feeding a sheep. — We punctuated our journey from Alton Towers with a trip to Chatsworth House to feed some livestock.

Rope climbing. — Chatsworth House also has a spectacular adventure playground.

Kid carrying huge stick. — “I found a stick!” “That’s… half a tree!”

Log cabin in the Landal Darwin Forest. — Eventually we reached our cabin, unpacked… and jumped into the hot tub!

Lounging on the sofa with a CBeebie toy. — For the duration of the week we instituted “holiday mornings”, permitting the children to get up by themselves, assemble their own breakfast, and watch broadcast TV… so long as they did so without disturbing the adults. It worked pretty well.

Ruth hops across balancing logs in the Darwin Forest. — The forest trails are full of obstacles fun for children… and adults.

Kids different ways up. — No, THIS way up!

Dan on a climbing wall. — Further along the trail, there’s a traverse wall.

Fairy houses in a wood. — Off the trails, all kinds of curious sculptures – like these fairy houses – can be found.

Running around on a football pitch. — We forgot to bring a football, but we played lots of imaginary sports.

Soft play dome. — The on-site soft play centre operated at minimal capacity, which felt about right.

Soft play slides. — A soft play centre with a low population means you’re often alone on the racing slides…

Dan and the kids on a racing slide. — …that is, unless you bring your own racers to compete with!

Mini-golf in the Darwin Forest. — The second mini-golf course of our holiday was deceptively harder than the first thanks to awkwardly-shaped obstacles that reflected the ball out at terrible angles.

Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids outside St. Elphin's Park Retirement Village. — Ruth’s old secondary school is now an old folks home and an attached fancy tea room, so – as we were in the vicinity – we had to go visit!

Stirring tea. — Remarkably, the kids (for once) showed impeccable table manners.

Wiping with a napkin. — I’m almost embarrassed to say that this, one of the best photos I’ve ever taken, was snapped accidentally when a 4-year-old reached over and touched my camera.

Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids outside the Devil's Arse. — What else does one do in the Derbyshire Dales? That’s right: go down caves!

The kids visit a restored ropemaker's hut in the Devil's Arse. — Staff at the Devil’s Arse were amazing and even took the kids on their own personal tour of a ropemaker’s hut (not part of the routine tour).

Ropemaking demonstration. — We also got to bring home a length of rope that the kids helped make.

Family down a cave. — It turns out to be hard to take a good photo down a cave. Can’t think why.

Dan, Ruth and the kids in a boat down a cave. — Our second spelunking expedition took us into Speedwell Cavern by boat.

Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids above the "bottomless pit" in Speedwell Cavern. — The bottomless pit, behind us, turns out to be less-bottomless than advertised.

Ice cream. — When it wasn’t raining, it was hot. Either way, we were on holiday, so ice cream was in order.

The kids asleep. — The kids shared a bedroom for pretty-much the first time since we moved house last year, and routinely sat up late reading stories to one another until they zonked out mid-book.

Dan, geocaching. — Naturally, I took one of our “chill out and rest” days as an excuse for a nice long hike and a geocaching expedition to the Sydnope Valley.

Dan, Ruth, JTA and the kids at the Crazy Cat Lady escape room. — We also tried an local escape room and it was spectacularly well-designed (and amazingly family-friendly).

Dan drinking from a champagne flute. — Oh, and there might have been a modicum of drinking, both in and out of the hot tub.

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):

Boy eating a crumpet alongside a bowl of fruit. — Our resident 4-year-old foodie claims that no crumpets are as good as Nanna Doreen’s “giant” ones.

Boy lying on Dan, waving, eating an ice lolly. — Sometimes you just need an ice lolly and a bean bag to chill on. If you can’t find a bean bag, use Dan.

Children running out of a shed. — Now that she doesn’t have any cats, dogs, or chickens, my mother’s old sheds have been converted into playhouses.

Ruth provides tickling. — Who needs a tickle? You need a tickle.

A girl with felt-tip whiskers drawn on to look like a cat. — Fortunately, the felt-tips she found were of the washable variety.

Dan takes a picture of Ruth taking a picture of the kids. — Why yes, this is a picture of me taking a picture of Ruth taking a picture.

A woman and a girl press their faces together and rub noses. — I’m not sure what this pose was MEANT to achieve…

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. — …but what it ACTUALLY achieved was my mother getting ink splotches on her face.

Two adults and a child using mobile phones and tablets. — Syncing everything up in anticipation of a Pokewalk.

A woman and a girl outdoors looking at their mobile devices. — “Which way to the Pokestop?” (I’m guessing. I don’t understand Pokemon Go.)

A woman and a girl on a cycleway, holding hands, between trees and weeds. — “How far to the Pokegym?” (I still don’t know anything about Pokemon Go. Don’t flame me.)

Sarah and Ruth pull strange pouty faces together. — I feel like every time I visit my family I acquire a larger number of photos that I can’t begin to explain.

My sisters wrestle(?) on the floor. — Like this one. Is this some kind of game? What are the rules? Who’s winning? I just don’t know.

Becky lies on the floor, surrounded by/covered in children. — Is this the same game? Are the children all on the same team (against Becky) or not? I have so many unanswered questions.

Dan and Sarah hold their heads with their hands, at a strange angle. — And this one. What are Sarah and I doing? Simultaneously cracking our necks, perhaps?

Hedgehog on a garden path. — The kids put food out for the hedgehogs and attracted a big one.

A boy, holding a GPS receiver, runs across a park lawn. — Now THIS kind of GPS-based sport I can get behind. Lead on to the cache!

Two children hold a geocache. — The kids were less impressed by this geocache than I was. And I wasn’t THAT impressed.

A girl does sit-ups in an outdoor gym. — Not content with sprinting around the 400m track wearing her wellies, our 7-year-old then proceeded to dominate on the park gym.

A boy on a cross-trainer. — If you pedal one of these things hard enough, does it take off?

Sarah helps a child on a zipline. — Wheeee!

A boy enjoys an ice cream at a park cafe. — So. Many. Sprinkles.

A boy runs in the distance. — How do they find so much energy?

A girl runs with a small dog on a lead. — We borrowed a dog from a family friend. If our 7-year-old had her way, we wouldn’t have given it back.

Jemma blows out candles on a birthday cake. — It was Jemma’s birthday, apparently, so we marked it at a family barbecue.

Ruth photographs a boy on a pontoon. — Nearby Brockholes nature reserve provided a wonderful outing.

Ruth photographs her 4-year-old as he stands on a pontoon dock. — This one’s the less-accident-prone of our children. Otherwise he’d probably already be in the water, somehow.

Ducks approach a girl on a pontoon bridge. — Our 7-year-old likes to befriend ducks wherever she goes.

Children run away into a meadow. — Again with the boundless energy as the kids disappear into one of Brockholes’ meadows.

A boy runs away from two adults. — That boy loves a big open space to run in, for sure.

A girl shouts with excitement as she crosses a wobbly bridge. — Brockholes’ adventure play area is pretty exciting too.

A boy concentrates hard as he crosses a wobbly bridge. — But crossing a wobbly bridge isn’t the easiest thing when you’re little.

A boy climbs a two-rope crossing, balancing on the bottom rope while holding the top rope. — Luckily our children are both pretty fearless and adventurous and will give pretty much anything a go.

A boy shouts from the top of a grassy knoll near a car park. — It’s hard to tell, but he’s not shouting in distress here, but in joy.

Children petting an English Longhorn cattle. — I believe this is an English Longhorn, a traditional draft animal of North-West England in centuries past.

Two adults and two children pose with a wooden sculpture of a doe lying down. — I made several attempts to get my mother, my sister Sarah, and both our kids into a single frame in which they were all looking at the camera and none of them were blinking. I failed, but this was the closest I managed.

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:

Dan and Ruth outside a wooden "pod" glamping structure. — This caravan-sized wooden hut became our delightful little home for a few days.

A river snakes through a lightly-wooded valley. — Here, at the edge of the Forest, the Bier Beck snakes lazily towards the River Ribble.

Dan strokes a large brown horse wearing a red jacket. — The farm on which our pod was situated kept horses.

A horse wearing a zebra-print jacket. — I just loved the fact that this horse had a zebra-print jacket.

Ruth and Dan at the trig point at the summit of Pendle Hill. — One morning, we took a scorching hike up Pendle Hill. Didn’t see any witches, but also didn’t receive any mission from God, so I guess all’s well.

Steve Taylor wearing a bathtub and climbing Pendle Hill. — We DID get to meet Steve Taylor, though, who’s repeatedly climbing the hill, carrying a bathtub, until he’s ascended to the consecutive height of Mount Everest. He’s raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, the hero.

Dan and Ruth enjoy cocktails in a beer garden. — That pubs expanded their outdoor seating provision to handle social distancing works wonderfully when you get to sit in a gorgeous but quiet beer garden.

Ruth plays a pipe organ. — During a self-guided tour of the nearest village we bumped into the vicar who showed us his church’s pipe organ. Ruth tried to explain to me how (and why) this particular pipe organ was unusual and cool, but I’m not sure I’ll ever “get it” as well as she does.

Dan, sweaty, at the top of a rise. — I found a second wind on a walk around Gisburn Forest and jogged up to the trail’s highest point, leaving Ruth far behind the sweaty mess ahead of her.

Orange-red river water beneath Dan's feet. — I’m not aware of any iron mining operations anywhere near this forest, but there must be iron oxide in the rocks to turn this stream so red.

Ruth and Dan eat (fake) duck pancakes outside their lodge. — Each evening we’d record a quick selfie video to say hi to the kids. Sometimes (with some help!) they’d send one back.

A fire pit rages and sparks. — A particular treat was stargazing by the fire pit on an evening.

Dan and Ruth with the sea in the background. — As we checked-out of our accommodation, Ruth suggested we see the sea (we’re a long way from it, normally), so we diverted via the coast.

(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:

Children pet a starfish — Starfish-petting.

Starfish with childrens' hands nearby. — (Yes, actual starfish.)

Boy in the (bones of the) mouth of a shark. — That’ll be Seaworld, of course.

Underwater transparent tube with fish outside and children inside. — Tube. Tube tube tube.

Child peering into a fishtank using a dome underneath it. — Do you think the fish think that humans are the exhibit?

Children in a VR motion simulator. — Both kids play with VR at home and are way less susceptible to VR-nausea than I am (even with all the practice I’ve had!).

Girl in front of a LEGO mosaic of butterfly wings. — Legoland Manchester. (Did you even know there was a Legoland in Manchester? I didn’t.)

Kids with Lego Batman. — The 4-year-old took “meeting” Lego Batman way more-seriously than the 7-year-old, I think.

Child in a lego space suit. — That’s one small step for…. OW I STOOD ON A LEGO BRICK!

Child with a contributory LEGO mosaic. — This brick was her contribution, I guess?

Boy balancing on a beam at a park. — I think this must be Avenham Park in Preston.

A boy doing finger painting. — Many of his paintings start out as beautiful coloured stripes and end up as brown handprints. I can’t imagine how.

Children play shop: a boy operates a checkout and a girl buys shopping. — “Do you do contactless?”

Children gardening. — I gather the children even got a little gardening done… or at least, grazed on the entirety of my mother’s herb garden.

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…

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.

Ruth and Dan in a car, in a car park. — Ruth and I went directly to a drive-through PCR testing facility.

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.

Barricade with signs reading "Quarantine: Zombie Outbreak" — I set up a “yellow zone” between Owen’s quarantine area and the rest of the house into which we could throw supplies. And I figured I’d have fun with the signage.

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:

Dan and his 4-year-old wearing silly hats. — Silly Hat Morning!

Dan and the kids on a swan boat. — Swan boat ride. (I had to do all the pedalling, but the kids were good at shouting orders and threatening to fire upon or board the other boats!)

Monkey on roof of car. — A trip to Woburn Safari Park isn’t complete without a photo of a monkey on the roof of a car.

A child watches a giant tortoise try to open a gate. — That giant tortoise was determined that it could open the (latched) gate if only it pushed hard enough.

Children petting a goat. — Kids love a kid (goat).

Girl eats half a sausage roll. — Nothing beats a picnic lunch right as everybody else rushes to queue for food in the heat.

A boy pours a juice drink onto some candy floss. — Ever the culinary experimenter, our 4-year-old tries pouring a Fruit Shoot onto some candy floss.

A boy holds a GPS receiver as he walks down a lane. — And of course, some geocaching might have happened.

Children look around a field. — “The cache is this way!” “No, it’s THIS way.” “Kids! It’s still 200 metres away, keep walking!”

Children hold a toy plane with "geocache airlines" written on it. — GC98N1P – whose cache container is this aeroplane and is hidden in a “crash site”! – is one of my favourite local caches.

A girl plays a kazoo. — I gave the 7-year-old a kazoo. #parentingmistakes

Children painting — We start with nice colourful lines…

Boy with painted brown hands. — …and end up with brown hands! It’s part of his artistic process, I guess.

Children in pyjamas at a breakfast table greet Robin outside the patio doors. — We enjoyed a socially-distanced visit from Robin one breakfast time.

A girl wearing headphones programs in Scrach. On her screen a witch is hunting for a broomstick. — We also extended our practice in programming with Scratch.

Dan holding the Wild Wolf 3 geocache. — I found an opportunity to retrieve a much-loved but no-longer-sustainable geocache of my own. Look at this monster!

Butter pies in an oven. — I tapped into my Lancashire heritage and had a go at making “butter pie”, a regional dish distinct to (pretty much) just Preston and Chorley.

A butter pie with heart-shaped pastry decorations. — This one turned out pretty well, but I’ve still got ideas about how I’ll improve for the next one.

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:

A hug with Ruth. — The children were glad to see mummy and daddy return.

JTA greets the kids. — Also, to explain everything that’d they been up to. (Possibly just as a ruse to keep from being sent to bed for a moment longer!)

A girl looks lost in a maize maze. — I specifically said, “Look like you’re NOT completely lost in this maize maze,” I swear.

Children playing crazy golf. — I feel like I’ve played a lot of crazy golf these last few weeks. This course was perhaps the second-craziest.

A girl digs in a tabletop sandpit. — There was some kind of puzzle to solve in a maze. Then you had to dig in the sand to find a token of the right colour and put it in a box to show you’d solved it. I don’t know.

A boy dives onto a trampoline. — I’m not sure this angle of approach is going to end well.

A girl on a carousel horse called "Annie". — Nice horse.

Two children crawl through a den of sticks. — Den-building? Or poster art for some gritty new Netflix series?

A girl hangs upside-down in a soft play area. — “I’m being a bat.” She hung there for some time, greeting other children as they entered her “cave”.

Dan and Ruth with their 4-year-old. — “Smile!” “Wait… what’s in your mou-?” [click]

A girl picks gooseberries. — Gooseberry-picking.

Ruth and the children pick gooseberries. — The gooseberries later made a great reduction to go on our Sunday brunch pancakes. Except for all the ones the kids ate before then.

A girl looks at a strawberry. — Choosing exactly the right strawberry requires significant mental effort.

A boy inspects a strawberry on a vine. — You need to check the fruit from every side before picking it.

A girl pulls a face as she looks at a strawberry. — This one failed quality control.

People stand around in a garden at a barbecue. — We got to go to Liz & Simon’s barbecue party and it was awesome to catch up with everybody.

Dan plays with a small baby. — Plus there are a few new faces in our friend group who I hadn’t had a chance to meet before.

Children at a picnic table in a garden. — Making (and re-making) friends is so much easier as a child.

Adults eat barbecue food. — For us adults, though, sharing food and alcohol goes a long way.

A child in the smoke of a barbecue holds his hand over his eyes. — “It’s smokey over here.” “By the barbecue, yes.” “Why?”

Children play together; adults sit and talk in the background. — It’s amazing how a toy designed for somebody WAY younger than you is fascinating if it’s just different enough from one you have at home. Novelty wins.

Children watch as our 7-year-old plays Pokemon with Simon. — She came here to kick ass at Pokemon and eat your burgers. And you’re all out of burgers.

The kids pose with a fruit-topped cake. — The fruits we picked earlier in the week made a great addition to a cake.

Fairpoirt Convention's livestream plays on TV. — Of course, we were SUPPOSED to be at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention this weekend, until it was cancelled for the second year in a row. But we still enjoyed Fairport’s livestream mini-concert.

Children dancing. — We adults felt too old and/or self-conscious to dance in our living room, but the kids had no such limitations.

Ruth and the kids in a heap at the end of the virtual concert. — By the end of the virtual concert we were all ready to flump into bed.

A fully-assembled 'hamster heaven' cage. — We built an enclosure for a new pet we’re expecting in the coming week (the kids’ first pet; let’s see how that goes…).

Robin reverse-abseilling up a tree. — Robin (and Owen – now recovered but not featured in this picture) – were instrumental in helping us run some ropes over a high bough of one of our garden’s trees…

The kids play switch while they hang in a 'nest swing'. — …to facilitate the installation of a wonderful new ‘nest swing’ Ruth had bought the kids but that they’d not really been able to use until now.

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!

Dan Q found GC1HW0N Penhul Hyll

This checkin to GC1HW0N Penhul Hyll reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

My partner fleeblewidget and I are celebrating 14 years together as a couple with a glamping holiday near Sawley and took the opportunity to climb up Pendle Hill this morning. I’ve many fond memories of taking this route with my father, when he was alive, and it’s interesting to be able to see how, just on the timescales of my own life, the shape of this hillside has changed owing to smaller landslides. Lower down, for example, human-caused erosion (picture attached) has damaged our destroyed paths I used to take, and new fences encourage climbers onto alternative routes. We also observed evidence (picture attached) of an older landslide, with a cliff of relatively new earth exposed where there clearly used to be a grassy/rocky slope.

Views were very good today and we could just about make out what we assume is the Ribble estuary in the distance from near the summit. A great and enjoyable expedition. Picture of the two of us at the trig point attached. TFTC.

Ruth and Dan at the trig point atop Pendle Hill

Evidence of a landslide on the East face of Pendle Hill

Diverted path owing to human-caused erosion

Dan Q found GC56V1D U P 6

This checkin to GC56V1D U P 6 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

My partner fleeblewidget and I are glamping up near Sawley to celebrate our 14th anniversary and came out today for a walk up Pendle Hill. Cache container was in the third place we looked; a nice easy find! Log a little damp but usable. TFTC.

Dan Q found GC46ZR0 B-by-B 3 feet and rising

This checkin to GC46ZR0 B-by-B 3 feet and rising reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

My partner fleeblewidget and I are staying at nearby Calder Farm to celebrate our anniversary and took a walk this afternoon to find this cache. Only around 300m as the crow flies from the GZ we figured this would be a quick expedition, but there’s no convenient path down to the riverside from where we are. Our first attempt at an approach took us to the North end of the footpath, but this seems to be through a garden centre/nursery that’s closed, and we couldn’t confirm whether or not the public footpath was open “through” or despite this, so we doubled go past our accommodation and approached from the South instead, ultimately resulting in a ~2km walk to and from the GZ!

Coordinates seemed off by about 5m based on my GPSr and phone, but the hint pointed us towards the obvious candidate and the cache was easily visible (although a bit of a stretch to reach!). Log had been inserted deep into the tube rather than the lid of the container and we struggled to extract it but got there in the end (we put it back in the lid for the benefit of the next cacher). TFTC.

Dan Q found GC1Y6GZ One Giant Step

This checkin to GC1Y6GZ One Giant Step reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Greetings from Oxfordshire! I’m staying in the holiday park just East of here as part of the first of a three week holiday (taken in an attempt to “make up” for holidays cancelled over the last year and a half owing to The Situation). I figured it’d be an easy and relatively direct hike from there to here, but I’d not counted on the work underway at the moment by the Forestry Commission! Several diverted footpaths later I finally found this “giant step”! Took Paul the Seahorse TB, SL, TFTC.

Forestry Commission sign advising that work is in progress.

Dan in front of a felled section of forest.

Lichfield

We took a family trip up to Lichfield this weekend. I don’t know if I can give a “review” of a city-break as a whole, but if I can: I give you five stars, Lichfield.

Maybe it’s just because we’ve none of us had a night away from The Green… pretty-much since we moved in, last year. But there was something magical about doing things reminiscent of the “old normal”.

Dan and the kids in a bed at a hotel. — “I’m so excited! We get to stay… *at a Premier Inn*!” At first I rolled my eyes at this joyous line from our 4-year-old (I mean… it’s just a Premier Inn…), but it did feel good to go somewhere and do something.

It’s not that like wasn’t plenty of mask-wearing and social distancing and hand sanitiser and everything that we’ve gotten used to now: there certainly was. The magic, though, came from getting to do an expedition further away from home than we’re used to. And, perhaps, with that happening to coincide with glorious weather and fun times.

A balloon artist wearing a unicorn on her head makes sculptures for children. — Socially-distanced balloon modelling turns out to work, not least because you can hand one of those long balloons to somebody without getting anywhere near them.

We spent an unimaginably hot summer’s day watching an outdoor interpretation of Peter and the Wolf, which each of the little ones has learned about in reasonable depth, at some point or another, as part of the (fantastic) “Monkey Music” classes of which they’re now both graduates.

Ruth and John sit on a picnic blanket in a painted circle; the maquee for the band is behind them. — So long as you weren’t staring at the painted circles on the grass – for corralling families apart from one another – you’d easily forget how unusual things are, right now.

And maybe it’s that they’ve been out-of-action for so long and are only just beginning to once again ramp up… or maybe I’ve just forgotten what the hospitality industry is like?… but man, we felt well-looked after.

From the staff at the hotel who despite the clear challenges of running their establishment under the necessary restrictions still went the extra mile to make the kids feel special to the restaurant we went to that pulled out all the stops to give us all a great evening, I basically came out of the thing with the impression of Lichfield as a really nice place.

Dan in Lichfield city centre, deserted early on a Sunday morning. — Take social distancing to the next level: do your urban geocaching at the crack of dawn.

I’m not saying that it was perfect. A combination of the intolerable heat (or else the desiccating effect of the air conditioner) and a mattress that sagged with two adults on it meant that I didn’t sleep much on Saturday night (although that did mean I could get up at 5am for a geocaching expedition around the city before it got too hot later on). And an hour and a half of driving to get to a place where you’re going to see a one-hour show feels long, especially in this age where I don’t really travel anywhere, ever.

But that’s not the point.

Ruth and the kids eat breakfast — The buffet was closed, of course, but these kids were made for an “all you can eat” breakfast.

The point is that Lichfield made me happy, this weekend. And I don’t know how much of that is that it’s just a nice place and how much is that I’ve missed going anywhere or doing anything, but either way, it lead to a delightful weekend.