Weekend Away

We've just come back from a lovely, if knackering, weekend away. We travelled to Reading area on Saturday and made the mistake of leaving late at just after 10. Byt the time we'd detoured for petrol it was closer to 10.30 and it took us half an hour just to get out of Barnstaple. The link road was horrendous, I have never seen so much traffic and Ellie was car sick before we got to the motorway. She is never sick!

Anyway, we made to Louise and Ian's by 3 o'clock, but really it should have taken half that time! After a lovely cup of tea to recover we took the kids, and thier dog, out for a walk in the woods. Then it was back to theirs for lots of lovely beer, food and chats. We were even treated to some fireworks in the back garden. It was great.

We spent the night in a Travelodge. In a family room purchased in one of their sales for £12. I didn't get much sleep. Carl did. I know cos I had to listen to him snore for most of the night. And the next day we were up bright and early for our day at Chessington World of Adventure.

For some unknown reason they decided not to open the most popular ride, Dragon something or other, until later, and they were not saying what time for anyone who asked. So we ran off to do 'Vampire' first. It's the first time I'd done a rollercoaster where the seats hang and your feet dangle. I survived, though. It was fun. And they got to do the Dragon ride eventually, although there was a 45 minute queue by the time we noticed it was open.

We did most of the other things we wanted, although the queues for the Halloween walk-through things were also mega, and the kids had got fed up of queueing by then so we restricted ourselves to just the one, 'The Krypt'. It made me scream when something shot rice down my back but other than that it was pretty rubbish.

They're favourite ride was 'Kobra', a giant disc which spins and goes backwards and forwards along a bumpy track at the same time. They did that twice, first thing in the morning and again in the dark just before we left. We were all knackered by then. It was 10 o'clock when we got home but they've all managed to get up and go to school this morning. I'm glad I've got the morning off!