Tintagel castle

On the first full day of our holiday we went to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. The highlight was seeing the shark feeding in one of those rooms where the fish swim over your head etc. There were also stingrays in the same aquarium and part way through the presentation Esther come running gleefully over to tell me that they stingray was waving and smiling at her! Funnily enough when you see a stingray flying over your head it DOES look exactly like it is smiling at you and its outside bits ARE wavy!

The next day we headed out to Tintagel Castle. We were really looking forward to going to the legendary castle of King Arthur and we learned quite a bit about how the legend came about -it was basically made up by a monk! What we didn't know was that it was a looooong walk to the bottom of cliff - you could pay for a landrover ride down! It wasn't suitable for pushchairs which was unfortunateas we had left our baby carrier at the in-laws..... 3 hours is a long time to walk up and down cliff sides with a baby.... We hadn't eaten lunch either and didn't get back to the car until 3.30. This is what I looked like at the end of the trek back from the castle:

This is the beach right under the castle, it's got some great caves, a little waterfall and lots of rocks so the girls were happy -Eliza literally filled her pockets with white sparkly stones which he scoured the beach for!

I was practising being a mermaid sitting with Alice on a comfy rock whilst the girls played:

Once you had treked down to the path to the visitors centre(the white building on the right down there) you had to then climb a billion steps up the side of the cliffs,tricky when you had to pass people coming down whilst also trying not to freak out that your kids might just fall over the edge... At the top there was NOTHING to stop you from falling over the edge other than a hand sized sign saying 'Caution: cliffs'. Yeah, thanks for that.

There was quite a bit to see up there -lots of ruins of little houses and gardens on one cliff and then you have to walk back down and up another cliff to get to the actual castle. Only Ben and Esther attempted them both. Why anyone would have wanted to live in such a tricky place to get to I shall never know. Me and the girls in the ruins...

Because of it being so high up and literally on the edge of the cliff I was in a state of constant fear and tension with a catch phrase of 'come away from the edge'. Ben kept joking with me that I should try to enjoy myself or at least look as if I was! Maybe we should have saved this outing till the girls were older... So here is a shot of me 'looking as if I am enjoying myself'!

The girls having a rest right at the top - they decided this rock made a nice bed:

Gorgeous views!

It's nice to be able to say we've been there! I think it would be great to re-visit in about 10 years time and I'd enjoy it alot more!

Yurt-tastic

2 weeks ago we went for our family holiday to Cornwall. I've only been there once, probably about 18 years ago so thought it was high time we went back. Some friends of ours had stayed in a yurt and I thought it looked like fun too so I booked it. Only after booking it did all of the negatives creep out of the woodwork.... Ben remembered he was going to be in California until the day we were leaving for the holiday, it struck me how much Alice hates travelling in the car and screams, then I realised the practicalities of all 5 of us sleeping in one 18ft yurt. Hmmmm... suddenly all the excitement I had felt when booking the yurt suddenly slipped away....
In reality I needn't have worried. The girls and I stayed with Ben's parents in Surrey whilst Ben was away which cut down our journey to Corwall by 2 hours, we travelled the bigger drives at night when the kids slept and the kids loved being in the yurt and slept really well despite there beinga bit window thing and it being pretty light in there. It was in beautiful Cornish countryside with only 1 other yurt on the site. Our fellow Yurties for the week were Lynne and her 9 year old daughter Molly. Esther and Eliza loved to play with Molly and it was good to see them spending time doing different things than their usual routine. The only downside was that I was FREEZING at night! There is a woodburning stove in there which staves off the cold for a little and you have thick duvets and proper beds but it was still freezing. I had to have Alice in the bed with me because it was too cold to be in the travel cot so I couldn't snuggle down in the blankets as much as I might have. On night 3 of 7 I was in tears because I was so cold and also coming down with a cold. That was the worst night and the others were all fine because I wore a hoody - I was so happy when I woke after night 4 and wasn't too cold Alice and I left the others sleeping and took some pictures of our happy glamping. I have pictures of the inside of the yurt but they are on Ben's i-phone so I have to get them off.
This is our lovely yurt:
This is the Cow Shed Kitchen with our own private bathroom just behind and the fire pit on the gravel just infront. Needless to say it was the old cowshed converted into the kitchen:

Inside the Cow Shed - you had your own fridge, oven etc, there was a table football table and games too:

The view from the kitchen to our yurt:

I think we discovered that glamping is not really for us. It was fun for a week but that was enough. I was ready to come home to somewhere warmer! Good job we had nice weather - the week before was torrential rain and the weather changed literally the day our holiday began. Ben said he didn't realise how much he had needed the break - he has been under some pretty heavy pressure at work for the last 5 months. Despite being cold at night the weather couldn't have been better and it was just fantastic being away from any responsibility for a week. It was our first family holiday as our little family, we usually go with either my or Ben's parents which meant it was harder work for us but we played things our own way and to our own timescales which was nice. There was so much to see and do in Corwall we have to go back but next time I want to have 4 walls around me at night ....