Barge Holiday

We had a fabulous time on our narrowboat last week and managed to avoid most of the nasty weather that the rest of the country was getting. We did decide to cut it short by one night though when our last day was hit by a monsoon!

We stopped at Chester on the way to the boatyard and had a walk around the old city walls - beautiful place. Then we picked up the boat in the afternoon just outside Whitchurch. Over the next three days we pootled along the canal to Llangollen (last time I was there was 22 years ago representing St Brendan's in a choir festival while everyone else in the world was listening to Live Aid!) On the way we crossed two aquaducts - the bigger of the two was 150 feet high and 1000 feet across - and sailed through three tunnels.

It was a bit nerve-racking at first getting used to controlling a 50 foot long, 18 tonne narrowboat, having to steer around 5 mintues before you actually needed to turn and having to get it through around 50 bridges which were all only a few inches wider than the boat. But by the middle of the week Joe was doing it! Here are some photos

Luke's "Graduation"

Today was Luke's last at St Francis - end of an era! We had a leavers' mass on Wednesday evening followed by a bit of a nosh up in the school hall. It was supposed to be a bring your own sarnies type thing but one of the mums (Mrs Tang) said she was going to cater - she runs the local Chinese restaurant. It went down a treat! In fact it was so good that we went to her place this evening for a take-away (good marketing strategy hey, Mike?)

Luke managed to get top marks in all his SATS which is very impressive. Joe also did very well in his tests. It was nice to get two very good reports.

We are off on our barge tomorrow for the week, so hopefully there will be lots of nice sunny pics to post here next weekend! Fingers crossed.

Joe's Corner

Joe had a day out with his class last week. They went to Wicksteed Park in Kettering for the day and Mum went along to help. They had a great time and Joe managed to win at go-karting (with a little help from his co-driver, Elaine).

Joe has also been extremely helpful recently. He has been helping Dad with the BBQ and fully appreciates the need to have a glass of something handy when grilling the kebabs (non-alcoholic in Joe's case). He has also been learning to iron and got through quite a pile this evening.

Bristol in the rain

Well it rained most of the time - these photos were from a brief dry period. Luke and Joe were on the hunt for newts but found lots of dragonfly larvae instead.

Because of the weather we played quite a few indoor games. Elaine and Luke were quite a devastating partnership winning both Triv and Scrabble.