The cousins all arrived in dribs and drabs. We had lots to eat and drink.Frannie had yet again turned on good weather and we were able to stay in the garden. we had masses of roast meat and home grown veg and gravy, a huge rice pudding and 3 large frogs in the pond - one being made with vegetarian jelly! I am not sure how 22 adults all claim not to have eaten the 40 odd freddo frogs when not a one remained by the end of the day and i am sure that pennys 2 small children werent the culprits!!
click on the photo tony and you can see everyone easily! see if you can identify all of them
After the festivities we cleaned and polished and tidied the house as we were off to county durham the next day for the week.
We loaded ourselves into the two cars oscar and the vixen with our loyal gps machines jenny and katie and set off for derwent grange farm out of consett county durham - and dont the gpses make life easy for driving!
We arrived late afternoon and were soon established in the renovated cow shed. It amply accommodated the 8 of us with room for a few small children as well. The farm used to do dairy cows and now did sheep and guests. It still has roaming chooks with a couple of cocks which like to wake up early and make sure that everyone else is up early as well!
frannie jim ian and i woke early the next morning and went out exploring- we headed off to bishops auckland where i had found an hours walk for us - and we discovered a roman bath house and fort - what fun bernard and sleepy hippo went with us to do the exploring.
the fort was cute but up a hill - why do they persist in putting interesting things up the top of hills in the uk??
We wandered around the hills and fields of bishops auckland - getting totally lost in the process until eventually some locals directed us in the right direction and then frannie decided that her iphones gps would also help locate us!
nice cold chocolates coffees and teacakes in a courtyard cafe and then we headed back to the farm to find the younger ones to launch an expedition to durham and the cathedral and castle.
Durham cathedral has a tower , a 325 step tower, the builder ian gareth and i decided to climb said tower - all 325 steps of it.It waas a sunny day when we set off but by the time we reached the top - it was raining - how did that happen??
we came back down the 325 steps to find tabitha had found a castle tour which was about to start so we headed over to the castle.
It is now used as a university hall of residence - not a bad place to live!
The parking meters were about to expire so we bundled ourselves back into the 2 cars and headed back to the farm for tea.
The next day Wednesday i think, we launched an expedition to hadrians wall - first we went to housestead fort and wandered up yet another very steep hill to look at the roman ruins with lots of other brave brits.
We had packed a picnic and so then went to explore vindolanda which had a museum as well and better ruins - if ruins can be better.
Once we had decided we had found enough roman soldiers we once again put ourselves back into the cars and headed back to the farmhouse to organise ourselves for a local pub meal.
It was newly taken over and the 8 of us wandering in caused a bit of a stir in the kitchen who werent yet used to feeding larger groups. the food however wasnt bad.
the Thursday morning ian jim frannie and i left the young ones in bed while we went for a walk - Stanhope this time - we discovered a 250million year fossil tree in the local churchyard - well thats not true we didnt discover it - it had been discovered in a quarry locally and moved piece by piece to the churchyard.
We went for our walk and walked along the stanhope burn where bernard and eventually frank lyon went bungy jumping - i am sure that this will be blogged on bernards blog when he recovers from the shock - he did twitter it and seemed quite excited by it all.
We organised lunch and headed back to the farmhouse. Frannie jim and I continued our walking program, at St Johns Chapel that afternoon while ian stayed back at the farm to organise lamb shanks for tea.
We got up early friday morning to pack and tidy and headed off to Richmond to explore ,however the traffic jam at the outskirts was shocking so we abandoned that and went to ripon to look at the cathedral. We missed the cathedral as the cafe meal although good tasting took ages and ages to appear and the builder got forgotten so it took even longer.
the M1 and the A1 both decided to delay our journey with long queues of traffic so we didnt finally get home til late in the afternoon.
We had a wonderful week. Ian and the kids are going to a games park today near leeds - as you do and so jim frannie and i will play locally and perhaps go and explore sherwood forest.
having a wonderful time - will talk soon
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