UK holiday

Photos uploaded on September 24th but blog posted 27th

We spent 4 weeks in UK during July and August. The highlights were times spent with the family and especially our grandchildren. We stayed with Hannah, Simon and Ben for most of our visit.

This picture of Amelie was taken on a visit to Noah's Ark farm zoo near Bristol where she was enjoying the water play area. They have a lot of big animals including rhinos, tigers and a giraffe as well as farm animals and small animals that can be touched and held. There are also several large indoor and outdoor play areas and interesting talks and displays so despite arriving when it opened and leaving when it closed we didn't have time to do everything.

Another day we took Rosie, Gabriel and Amelie to Oldbury Court Park in Bristol. There is a new play area but it was extremely busy so we mostly explored the grounds where there are walks through woods to a river, rocks to scramble and small caves to look into.

This handrail by some steps provided some good bannister sliding (with Granny running down next to them to catch them when they fell off!)

Ben is generally a very happy little chap and was enjoying himself when we stopped for a picnic when out for a walk with Pete and Hannah and Simon.

Hannah, Ben, Simon and I visited Pete and Niki for a long weekend in Yorkshire and were able to get out and do some more walking. This was another food stop being enjoyed by Ben, whilst Pete seems to be taking the map reading much more seriously.

Ben has decided that swings are great fun so that kept him happy while the older 3 grandchildren were doing more adventurous things in the play area at Blaise Castle in Bristol.

The Sunday before we left Ben was dedicated at Woodlands church where Hannah and Simon worship. It was a lovely service and a beautiful sunny day so we enjoyed a relaxed family gathering in Hannah's garden afterwards.

It was particularly nice for me to see some flourishing flowers and vegetables growing in places where I had battled on previous visits to dig out trees, shrubs and grasses.

The less exciting bits of our trip were visits to the dentist, doing shopping and spending many long days sorting and clearing large ammounts of stuff from Simon's mum's flat. Polly seems to have settled reasonably happily at the residential home where she is now living and we were able to take the grandchildren to visit her several times which she seemed to appreciate although she didn't really know who they were.