In the evening we headed down to Looe, bagged a couple of caches then spent a while in the amusement arcade before finding somewhere to have dinner.

The next morning was very wet. So, after closing all the windows on the car ( I remain convinced that the windows went down by themselves ), we started a long game of Monopoly. I was bored after, um, 2 minutes, so didn’t care when I eventually did a few bad deals and went out. Steve won, as he always does with Monopoly.

In the afternoon we walked the coastal path from our campsite to Seaton – very up and down, and hot! We’d set off in cloud/wind, so all had jumpers and some of us wore coats too, then we were baking when the cloud cleared and the sun came out. Luckily Anna had a scarf on so I made a sling out of it and stuffed as many coats and jumpers into it as I could! We had icecreams at Seaton and the kids played on the beach while we had a cup of tea as well Headed home for showers etc. then back into Looe for dinner again – big treat!

Ok, here’s the proper post. For the past few years, Steve has gone to see the Rally GB in Wales with Mr Portico. When I realised that the rally fell on the first weekend of half term this year, I decided that it would be a great idea for us all to go (hoping that the Portico family might fancy it as well), so booked a campsite in the general area for that weekend and a few days afterwards. As it turned out, we were left to go it alone, even though we did spend a very lovely afternoon with the Portico one and all on the Sunday.

The rally was fun … well it would have been fun if it hadn’t been so wet … well, it was still fun, just very wet as well. Lots of driving and walking between stages, and so much mud. I probably would go again, but I’m not sure I’d get the kids there again without much kicking and screaming! We enjoyed Sunday morning’s stage the most – mainly because it was dry, at Walters Arena you could see so much more of each car – *and* we had an hour extra to play with due to the clocks going back! Forgot the big camera (doh) so not many photos since the iphone isn’t known for its photographic abilities.

After the rally on Sunday we had the pleasure of catching up with friends on Southerndown Beach. They humoured me and not only did we work together to find info needed for an earthcache there, we also did two more real caches. I think the last one they only took me to so that they could laugh at me getting my feet wet on the stepping stones across the river to find it, but it was fun.

After that we had three more days to fill, which, I think, was probably too much given that we didn’t have any plans. The Hymer was fine, but not the most spacious of vehicles for 5 people really. Luckily it was relatively dry for those three days and the children spent a lot of time at the campsite’s trampoline, inventing games which they played for hours.

We also walked along the coast from Llantwit Major to St. Donat’s (yes, another earthcache) and had icecreams despite the drizzle. Actually this was good, and I do enjoy earthcaches as they give you things to look for and learn about along the way – I wouldn’t even have noticed half of it otherwise!

We ambled round the shopping centre in Bridgend, went to the cinema and watched Up in 3D (fun but I could have lived without it!), then on the last day we sneaked into the first round of Britain’s Got Talent auditions with a friend for a couple of hours – fascinating, but we didn’t stay long – went off to do the Dr Who exhibition in Cardiff, as the kids wanted to see it (grown ups were slightly disappointed with it really).

Quick rundown of the best of the rest from each day:
Saturday: Picking Anna up in Gloucester en route – we’d missed her! Although within 10 mins of leaving her music camp I wondered why, as she drilled us on relative majors/minors. She had a great week, I hope it will be enough to bump her into being able to pass the G5 theory in November …

Sunday: Sunshine! Although we nearly melted in the 3-4yo kids’ group, the afternoon was lovely and hot and we sat around doing nothing!

Monday: Caching and walking all the way along Bexhill Seafront, as well as meeting up with lots of my family. This included visiting a very strange cafe with the worst menu/service ever – baguettes posing as paninis and half-plated dinners being served!

Tuesday: relaxed meandering around the lake … odd combinations of food for dinner but these are strangely acceptable when camping!

Wednesday: Taking our friends out for a long walk, introducing them to geocaching

Thursday: visiting the Screamteam at home (dreamy house) and at the shop (dreamy pianos), then the kids swimming together.

Friday: packing up the awning just *before* the rain started!

Today: getting home, eventually, and a nice hot bath

Photos in the usual place; I didn’t take that many really, wish I had got the camera out a bit more but never mind.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Firstly we should have a relatively relaxed morning, as Josiah is away on his Killerton Wild Night. He is, unfortunately, the child who needs the most assistance to get ready in the morning, so it will feel fairly luxurious not to have to hurry him along! Then later in the day, his trip finishes at lunchtime and he needs collecting from school at 12pm – so I have the treat of an afternoon off work to go and pick him up. Joe’s night looks like it could get pretty wet; the rain has just started here and is due to carry on until late afternoon tomorrow – oh joy! However, he only took one change of clothes so there’s a limit to how much mud-soaked clothing I’ll have to wash! Assuming that his night really has been wild, he should go straight to sleep and leave me to get a few jobs done around the house

After that, Abbie’s parents’ evening; I totally love her teacher this year (as does she) so even looking forward to that! No violin lesson as Mr Featherstone is off at a rehearsal for some concert or other, so that’s postponed until Monday. Instead we can have tea and kids’ club, and then Steve and I are going out to see Martin Taylor, which should be a great evening, judging by these tracks. Even planning to hop on the train into town so that we can have a drink, woo, how exciting!

On Monday we drove down through the Peak District, taking in a quick tour of Holmfirth and a rather longer walk around a reservoir on the way (yes there were caches there, how did you guess? ). Our base for the next few days was a new and beautifully decorated cottage on the southernmost edge of the Peaks near Ashbourne. On our first day we explored Ashbourne via a multi-cache, and then went walking in a pretty village which, ahem, also happened to have a few caches on a circular walk around it!

Anyway. When the kids first started school, I’ll be honest, I was dead jealous that someone else went with them on these trips and got to see them having fun, learning while out and about, when I thought that was my job alone! I’m over it now, in the main. I’m still occasionally slightly envious that teachers and instructors are the ones watching them while I’m at work being attacked with bananas, but all the same grateful to Miss White for taking just a few photos of Abbie in action. The landscapes are Abbie’s own photos from a walk they went on.

First we landed at the Puddles’ very late on Friday night, it was great to have their hospitality for the weekend – special mention to Max who looked after children at various points as well as cooking! On Saturday Merry gave me a guided tour of her unit and I shopped for various birthday presents that I needed (must remember to run the order through the website today!).

We went on to Helen & Kirsty’s 70th birthday party, which was very enjoyable – I loved seeing old friends and the children did too; Josiah in particular had a ball running around with his mates. Photos are in the usual place but these are some of my favourites.

On Sunday, after earning myself lots of Mummy points for letting Anna buy Rocket Dogs for summer school shoes, we headed off to see our friends Stuart & Liz, who long time blog readers may remember. They’ve moved house recently so it was nice to catch up with them too. The kids had fun playing with fire in their garden!

From there we carried on down to my parents’ in Oxfordshire where we stayed for a couple more nights. Lovely time with them, playing games, sitting around chatting, eating delicious food, and I even got to introduce most of them to geocaching too

We also had much hilarity remembering this funny story that my Dad always used to tell at church Christmas parties, probably the memory of it was more amusing than it actually is, but it made us all laugh, a lot! One of those where the telling of it is far funnier than the punchline itself!

Unfortunately Anna wasn’t well yesterday and Josiah has been asleep for most of the day today – something worse than just overtiredness I think. Still, it gives us a good excuse to sit around not doing very much today and perhaps tomorrow as well. Not much else planned this week apart from catching up on the inevitable washing and cleaning that needs doing at the end of term.

Everyone showered and packed and tidied; I popped to the shop for rolls to make a packed tea, used up the last of our food between lunch and the rolls, cleaned and tidied the kitchen, took the bins out, etc. Then there was some final film viewing and games room playing before it was time to go.

Everything went totally smoothly until three quarters of the way into the flight home, the pilot announced that it was too foggy to land at Exeter, so they were diverting us to Birmingham. Not really a disaster, just a bit of a long drawn out journey – Flybe laid on a coach back to Exeter, so we finally got home around 3am, only 4 hours later than planned! It was still fairly foggy though so probably the right call. Today has felt a bit spaced out as a result but we’ve done all the normal stuff for a Saturday (working, orchestra, shopping, housework!) and it’s good to be home. A truly relaxing and fabulous holiday though, we highly recommend the villa if anyone’s interested for next year.

After they’d warmed up again we bought chocolate instead of ice creams, then got back on the tram and went to Alicante where we climbed up el Castillo Santa Barbara – some of us more happily than others (you will notice that the girls aren’t in any of these photos!).

Must also mention the strange yoghurts that we had after tea, apparently biscuit flavour! ‘sabor a galleta’, with a picture of a biscuit on the label. Made us laugh, anyway! Ended the day with films and scrabble again A lovely penultimate day.

Late afternoon hot tub sessions for all, then a film, tea, tetris puzzles and scrabble