We spent a weekend in the midlands visiting Daddys family and that involved a day at Alton Towers. I was initially a bit disappointed to find that Ms R didn’t want to go on all the slightly bigger rides that she is now big enough to ride on. I’d been looking forward to wurlitzer and mini roller-coaster type rides only to be told that they didn’t want big, fast or scary. Didn’t go down well with my ‘lets get our moneys worth by scaring the sense out of us all’ attitude but I recovered quickly and enjoyed the more sedate rides. My favourite was a ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ ride which involved a gentle boat ride and a flight in the great glass elevator. It was very clever and didn’t involve much movement but I guess if you are five and under and the graphics are really good then you might really believe that you were shooting through the roof of a building and that would, understandably make you rather hysterical.
After a couple of days at home we then packed up our tent and headed for a tiny Park Resorts in the middle of nowhere. The lady in charge of the campsite side of things obviously ran a tight ship and returned to lecture us and scold us more than once while we were pitching the tent but then thankfully left us alone. The entertainment manager took a liking to us (possibly because we were often the only ones there) and so we got a pretty personalised entertainment plan. Sparkle, Sparky or Narky visited us depending on who we’d expressed hope in seeing and both children were known to everyone. They won medals, stickers and t-shirts and over the busy weekend took part in a dancing competition which found them blinking under the bright lights of the stage and expected to perform. Ms R has learnt from somewhere (I’m blaming Cbeebies) how to wiggle her hips and shake her shoulders and Master R tried to copy an older boy doing break-dancing. He won a prize in that comp based on trying to stand on his head while waving his arms and being the smallest. We visited another theme park for more thrills and spent lots of time wandering along the river bank, spotting rabbits after dark and fliying kites. We swam most days, Ms R practiced swimming under water. And they made friends with three older girls who mothered them lots.
I’m sure if I could remember every detail I’d be able to put lots of educational spin on our trips. I remember Ms R getting pretty good at reading grid references from the road map ("There’s a picture of a duck in C3") and she finished her Maths workbook during the time we spent travelling. She finally got the hang of number lines but didn’t see the point in them when she already knew the answers and also finally got the hang of working out what the missing number was. She hasn’t asked for another one yet but I think by the end of the book she was getting a bit fed up of it. Thirty-two pages of sums totalling no more than ten was pretty boring.