Bank holiday banker

I'm not a great fan of bank holidays - too many people with free time at the same time. It's always too busy where ever you go. We tend to stay at home and hide!

However, it was the boys' 11th birthday on Saturday, so we had to do something.

Their birthday treat was a visit to Legoland at Windsor, but we took them the previous Saturday to avoid the crowds, ho ho!

No pictures to speak of because we spent most of our time in queues for rides. Token photo below.



On their actual birthday, we took them (plus older sister) to High Lodge at Thetford Forest and, though it was quite busy, had a nice time. The children enjoyed the playgrounds (including 17-year-old big sis), we played cricket and football, then it was back home for a party tea (is there a better meal?) and more hours on the new Wii (Mariokart and tennis).




There was a new 'attraction' at Thetford Forest - a big wooden pyramid to with two tunnel slides.



The eldest daughter is off on her gap year travels at the moment, but she did remeber to send birthday cards from New Zealand. She's following in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg - Around The World in 80 Days or, in her case, 12 weeks. So far on her whistle stop tour, she's done New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fiji and New Zealand. In a couple of weeks, she's off to Oz.

Anyway, back to the more mundane . . . Sunday saw us make our usual visit to a garden centre - this week to pick up dog food and flea treatment for both the dogs. Pm, Mrs DW took me to Blacks in Cambridge to buy a new pair of walking boots for my birthday (9th) if anyone is planning to help me celebrate. I can't post a picture of said boots because they were whisked away and hidden (under the bed)!

Sunday was also interesting because the dog and I discovered two new residents in the village. Most of the farms around the village are arable - oilseed rape as far as the eye can see. But one local farmer has decided to branch out . . . into rare breed cattle. We bumped into him inspecting his two young White Park cows which had arrived just the day before.



He told me he was fed up with driving a tractor up and down spraying crops and, though he was meant to be retired, thought he'd like to help save this very rare breed. When he was growing up, his family had a dairy herd and though that was long ago, I think he still has a passion for cattle.

The two cows, which he hopes to start breeding from this year, came from the herd at Wimpole Hall. Apparently. there are only about 200 breeding females in world (there's a herd in Germany and another in the USA) and its quite a complicated process breeding them because you can't breed from the same line for four generations (to prevent in-breeding).

Finally, I had a perfect Bank Holiday Monday - two pleasant walks with the dog, during which we spotted a nice deer with antlers, and the rest of the day in the garden, planting, weeding and generally pottering.



Perhaps, bank holidays aren't all bad after all.