Monday was a duty kind of day, with a long drive to Birmingham to visit my old workplace. It was a big drive and I had forgotten what a hard commute it was.
We found the PDSA OK and it was all much the same as I remembered it, with twice the number of staff crammed inside!! Ian was the same as ever and we had a cuppa with him and then drove around and about to find Di's house as she doesn't work monday's these days.
Great to catch up with Di, she is retiring in Sept after 37yr at the same job - the mind boggles!
We headed north again and took the girls for a nosey at Tutbury Castle. A great ruin and we found the foundations of the house that Mary Queen of Scots was held captive in. It was a beautiful afternoon, and a wedding was about to get underway in the castle, so we headed back to the cottage and chilled out in the sun and let the girls play in the garden.
Tuesday we headed off on our way to Kate's place near Chester. We were determined to take our time and have a relaxed day after all the driving about of monday. We avoided Stoke and headed to Market Drayton for morning tea, then doodled around the countryside looking for castle ruins that were marked on our map.
We finally managed to find Beeston castle for a picnic lunch spot. This was a great find with woodland all around, great for a walk, lots of cool ruined towers where the girls pretended to be archer's and then an impressive ruin in the centre up on a rocky crag. Amazing views for miles and miles and more ruined rooms for the girls to pretend to be princesses.
We drove on from there for a short way, stopping at the Cheshire Ice Cream farm for......ice creams! From there it was a short run to Kate's village and we met her in the pub and came home for a lovely big walk up the river and tea in the garden. The village she lives in is wholey owned by the Duke of Westminster, so is very quiet and uniformly pretty!
Today (wednesday) I managed to get a run in - up and down the river again. Beautiful - I disturbed a squirrel but didn't see any other wildlife. We took the girls to Chester Zoo, which was good lots of good displays but a scary scary number of people!! We had lunch and finished up there about 1ish, drove to Llangollan to meet Kate after her her morning of teaching famers how to do AI's....
Llangollan is a beautiful wee town on the Dee, we had a wee wander and had a trip on a horse-drawn canal boat. Saw a steam train and the kids had ice cream (again!!), then we headed to the Corn Mill (now a pub) for a fantastic meal.
The kids are all ready for bed now after a bath. Hoping Ash is still having fun at Man U, we're going to check out Chester tomorrow morning, walk the old walls, check out the shops and have fun.
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