Country Kids: New Year's Day On The Beach

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The weather has been foul for the best part of the past fortnight. It managed to not pour down on Christmas Day (which was kind of it), but by and large it's either been pouring down as if Armageddon was about to occur, or it's been devoid of all colour. I'm not sure which I dislike least; I think the incessant rain was preferable as at least then the wellies get used!

It was beginning to feel like we'd never see the sky with any form of vibrancy in it again, until we woke up on New Year's Day to a world of blue skies and brilliant sunshine! As Mr. TBaM said, "It's almost like the weather's trying to make a New Year's Resolution!"

We donned our wellies, coats, scarves, hats and gloves and headed down to Barry Island.

Along with every other person in south Wales!

I seriously cannot remember the last time I saw the island so chockablock with traffic; not even on the hottest day in the Summer was it that bad (and I'd know because I was there then as well!). However we persevered and did actually manage to park on double yellow lines find a parking space quite close to the beach!

The Boy and I set to building a sandcastle, only the little monkey soon demolished it repeatedly at which point we decided to dig a hole instead. It was to be of epic proportions!

new years day 1

We were quite a way up to the top of the beach but as you can see, after a while we hit the water table. Did this stop us? Nope, we kept on digging and in the end The Boy took his bucket down to the water's edge to increase our supply.

new years day 2

It was at this point that I went to get some chips for us. Again, I wasn't the only person with that idea: six chippies on Barry Island and three had run out of chips, with a thirty minute wait in all the others. In the end, thanks to 'Big Dave', we did get our supply and we sat in the car with rosey cheeks and drippy noses munching on big, fat, chips!

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coombe mill

Also linked up to No Such Thing As Bad Weather's Outdoor Play Party

Learning for Life

Country Kids: A Breath Of Fresh Air

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Having been stuck inside for the best part of a week, if not longer, I felt we were all going a little stir-crazy. With a break in the weather today (it has poured most of the morning), we headed out to blow the cobwebs away on one of the beaches in Barry.

Our normal choice is Barry Island but I knew The Boy would want to build sandcastles and we needed to keep moving! We ended up going around to the Cold Knap instead to feed the swans on the lake there, and then going for a walk across the sands at Watchtower Bay.

Wrapping his lordship up well in his bargain outdoor weather suit from Matalan (I'm not entirely convinced his ear infection has gone unfortunately) and bargain sheepskin lined wellies from Trago Mills, we headed off to the lake to feed the swans. At the outside edge of the lake I noticed there was a load of inch long tiny fish scattered all over the pathway. Either it had been raining fish (!) or the wind which was creating waves across the lake, had blown enough water over the side and caused them to be washed 'ashore'. Looked very odd and I felt a bit sorry for them!

Following this 'brisk' stroll we got blown along the path went to explore the bay surrounding the old harbour in Barry Island; Watchtower Bay. We've played on the sand in the harbour before but never walked across the bay from the other side before. The tide was really low this afternoon, and perfect for sploshing, paddling, finding paw prints and tracking the animals (dogs) and chasing the billowing sand.

The wind this afternoon certainly blew away the cobwebs in our minds, and every other corner of our bodies! The Boy was getting a little tired and cold, as were we, but not really ready to go home yet. Resigning ourselves to the inevitable crush on a slightly damp Sunday we headed to softplay where I buried my head in my intermittent 3G, while they carefully picked their way through the non-warfare sections of the centre.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: In The Castle

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Today is our 11th wedding anniversary and we decided to take The Boy to see our wedding venue.

After we'd examined all the marvellous spiral staircases and hidden doorways, then marvelled at the towers and turrets, we decided to explore the fake moat (it's halfway up Caerphilly mountain, there's no way that the moat wouldn't have drained away. Plus Castell Coch was a folly for the Marquis of Bute and is full of decorative extras that have never had a function: drawbridge and moat being two of them) and splash in the puddles which were attempting to fill it up.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: Goes Stately

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This past eleven days for me have been rotten with this food poisoning, and in the last day or so I've really dropped down into the doldrums, especially as it is so cold and grey. I hate being ill (who would honestly say that the like it?!) and I hate not being able to eat comfort food when I'm poorly. I am desperate for a coffee and a mars bar, next week perhaps.

However, Saturday was a beautiful Autumn day and after an incredibly lazy morning, we togged ourselves up into fleeces, scarves, gloves and a bobble hat for The Boy and nipped over to Dyffryn Gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan. Aside from the stunning stately home there, it has amazing Grade I listed gardens divided into secret 'rooms' with extravagant designs, bizarrely placed follies and temples, vegetable gardens and a greenhouse, and an amazing arboreteum.

Dyffryn Gardens is great fun to explore at different times of year, especially Spring and Autumn, but not too often at £7.00 a head! It also unfortunately doesn't allow children to take in scooters which is a huge shame. Apparently a few elderly people complained so everyone has to miss out.

Luckily, The Boy was more than happy to go exploring and we let him lead the way through into new and ever more exciting secret gardens.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: In The Country Park

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Near us we have a country park that started life as a quarry. During the 1980s it was flooded and turned into a country park and lakes, and is a popular place to visit on a weekend for a stroll around the main lake, a play in the park and a trek through the wooded area.

The recent rainfall meant that the lake was at least a foot higher than it should have been, the surrounding boardwalk was flooded. However, we took some stale bread and fed the ducks while shoo-ing away gulls with the umbrella (like Sean Connery in Indiana Jones). We took The Boy's bike for him to practise, although daddy had forgotten to raise his seat so he struggled a little. That mixed in with ruts in the path meant that he toppled over a few times, even with stabilisers on, but he got back on and continued pedalling away: good lad!

Today brought a new first; showing The Boy how to climb a tree! (As Coombe Mill has pointed out, it was one of the things to do before 11 and ¾!)

I must confess though that I am properly chilled to the bone now, time for me to invest in some thicker trousers (or even long johns?!) for our outdoor play, I think.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: St. Fagan's Natural History Museum

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In the north-west corner of Cardiff there is a (not so little) treasure. Up until recently, we haven't been able to partake of its resources because The Boy has been a little bit too young, but now that he's becoming more and more curious it's ideal.

St. Fagan's Natural History Museum is an outdoor museum that houses a multitude of buildings from different times throughout history. It's also set in beautiful woodland with lots of areas to explore and a farmhouse with some animals in the yard. This was originally why we went, but we gained so much more! (We actually popped in on Saturday for an hour before closing, and decided to go back on Sunday as there was so much more to see. As it's free entry, it's a good day out)

It's called a museum but it's so much more than that. A museum is not traditionally somewhere children can immerse themselves in the past by being in the place, but at St. Fagan's that possible because of the reconstructed buildings. The newest addition is St. Teilo's church which was originally thought to be five hundred years old (until they found paintings in it that were three hundred years older than they first thought), and my favourite is the Rhyd-y-Car Ironworkers' houses, which is a row of six terraced houses and gardens, each decorated as they would have been at various points from 1805 to 1985. It makes Mr. TBaM and me chuckle to see the huge video players from our childhood.

The Rhyd-y-car houses were one of the things that The Boy found most interesting, the houses of 1955 (when nanny was a little girl) and 1985  had recognisable features to him: Did nanny have those lights?Is that what a tv was like when you were little mummy? It was an excellent way to introduce him to the concept of history in a way that he can equate to as most of the time he has difficulty remembering what he had for lunch! He was horrified at the concept of outdoor toilets!

We had great fun pretending to be chickens in the cockpit (we glossed over what the chickens would have been doing there), buying bread from the old bakery using flour ground on site, sitting in a Celtic roundhouse and pointing out he wouldn't like to live there because 'it's silly!' (which we went onto discuss meant different), and exploring the woods. The real gem was finding out there was a small, hundred year old, vintage, children's funfair there: his first go on the swingseats!

As it's a museum it's free, although parking is £3.50 a time. I actually bought a year parking permit for £17.50 because I can see us going there lots of times over the forthcoming year to explore the many different buildings, take part in the arts and crafts at different celebrations, explore the woodland, or just for a picnic and a play in the excellent playpark there.

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Linking this up to the fantastic linky 'Country Kids' over at Coombe Mill. Fiona does an excellent job of promoting and encouraging us to get outside and play with our children, and her linky is one year old this week!

coombe mill

Country Kid: Autumn Leaves

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I am sat here trying to recover from a gargantuam walk. "Let's nip up to town?" says I.

Problem is that once you've got to town (which is only a ten minute walk away), it's incredibly easy to nip to the park because it's only a few hundred yards from the town centre. It's a lovely, meandering, Victorian park. And it meanders down to the beach. Which is absolutely brilliant and we all love walking along the pier and plopping pebbles in the sea. There's just one problem with walking down to the beach…

…you have to come back up again!

However, as it is a beautiful day with an azure sky, wispy clouds and a warming Autumn sun, it was a really enjoyable walk along some of the very affluent areas of our seaside, Victorian town. One of the best bits about our town is the plethora of tree-lined avenues, giving an abundance of leaves. After the dry weather this week they were fantastically crunchy and inviting for a three year old little boy.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: Practise Makes Perfect

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One of our favourite jaunts is across the Cardiff Bay Barrage to Pizza Express. Today was no exception, and so with The Boy's bike and scooter accompanying us we trotted off in search of dough balls and coffee ice-cream.

It's a beautiful walk on a sunny day and today was just that; the air was crisp and the gloves were on. I love this time of year because the sunsets are beautiful and the light for photography is amazing. And can I just point out that while he's cycling and scooting on a road, no cars are allowed on it so it's safe!

Two thirds of the way across the barrage is a skate park, and I knew that The Boy would find it fascinating as he'd been watching the teenage boys skateboarding past us and he was trying to position his feet in the same way as them.

Pretty soon it was time to continue our journey, but he couldn't quite take his eyes off the stunts they were pulling.

One day my boy, one day.

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coombe mill

Country Kids: Porthkerry Park

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The azure sky and white-hot sun beckoned us out to play today, so we popped our welly-boots on and hot-tailed it down to Porthkerry Park for some fun and games. We'd tried to have fun with The Boy there last year when the new playpark has opened, but he was a little too young for it at the time. Now he's more physically confident, he adored the challenge.

After doing a fantastic impression of Spiderman on the climbing frame, we had a bear hunt through the woods looking for interesting shaped leaves for some art work, and ended up on the beach making pebble towers, plopping and skimming stones and riding fallen trees before squelching our way back through the mud to wrestle our boots off.

porthkerry park

Please excuse the rubbish quality on these images. Taken with my fantabulous dSLR but uploaded via wireless tethering on my phone due to Sky not getting their arses in gear and delivering our new router to us. I miss ADSL.

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coombe mill

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