It’s the May half term for my two this week, so instead of staying inside and twiddling our thumbs all day, I decided that the best thing to do would be to go out and have some fun. The weather was supposed to be overcast, but hopefully dry, so I thought we’d take a risk and go to an outdoor National Trust place. Now I know we’ve been to Winkworth Arboretum before, but it’s always such a fun place to go, and we explored some other areas that we’d not ventured into before. We were well prepared with a packed lunch and plenty of drink (nothing alcoholic) as the kids are under age and I was driving. Winkworth is about a 50 minute drive from our house, but a very pleasant drive, especially when you don’t hit any traffic which we didn’t. When we arrived we changed into our proper walking shoes and off we went. We took a map, just incase we got lost. We have a saying in our family, “We’re not lost, we’re exploring”. Although sometimes we are lost, but shush don’t tell anyone. We decided that we were going to follow the red route, which was the longest path, and the most challenging path, and was about 3.6 k.

At this time of year Winkworth is wonderful because all the trees are in full bloom and the azaleas are so colourful. There are wild flowers growing all over the place, and it’s just so quiet and tranquil. With the major building works going on right next to where we live and the noise that is coming from their machinery, it’s great to get away to the peace and quiet and listen to the wildlife for a change. Some of the wooded areas of the arboretum look like something straight out of the Cretaceous era. The kids and I were expecting dinosaurs to pop out from the undergrowth at any moment.

We found some wonderful places to sit. Some very basic, a tree trunk cut in half longways. This is where we sat when we had our lunch. We chatted about all sorts of things, from camping (Emily and I are not fans), to adventures my sister and I got up to when we were little, to our new home (when we finally move in, when that will be is anyones guess), to other strange things that I can’t share with you and should only be discussed between my children and myself. We followed the red route all the way round, and when we sat down we played “eye spy with my little eye, something beginning with T!” I wonder what that could be? We found some wonderful swathes of lupins growing. Their colours were so beautiful.

We took lots of photos and to finish off the day, before we got back in the car to come home, the kids had an ice cream and I had a black decaf coffee. I did ask for a black decaf coffee and the lady asked if I wanted milk? I guess they only hear the coffee part.

A wonderful day, and a shame that Mark had to be at work and couldn’t join us. They don’t have a shop at Winkworth, so we were unable to buy him a little present. Still we’ll visit another place on Thursday or Friday and get him something then. Emily is not a very outdoorsy type of person. She loves going for walks, but dogs, cats, birds (even the chickens) she’s not keen on. Don’t get her started on bugs and insects, and definitely not spiders. So when we were sitting down having a snack and a teeny tiny beetle landed on the ruck sack, well, let’s just say Emily wasn’t amused. It was a tiny little thing and wouldn’t have hurt her at all, but I’ll let you decide whether it looks evil or not.