Damp Devon

Each year for some seven or eight years, husband and I have taken two or three grandchildren youth hostelling.  This year we aimed to do it again, but this time two parents came with us, and my daughter. This year the company made up for the rainy weather.
We visited SS Great Britain in Bristol on the way down there, the most fascinating old ship I've been on.  I've been on older ships (in Stockholm and in Portsmouth) but this one related to relatives that I could imagine in the 19th century who might have travelled to Australia on such a ship. Its engineering is amazing.  How did they work out the maths to create those structures?  They must have applied calculus and had the machinery to create the propellor and the bows.
On the Monday,  thought we'd hide from the rain by investigating the hidden underground passages of Exeter.  Unfortunately too many others had had the same idea and it was fully booked.  So we paddled around,saw the outside of the cathedral, picked some blackberries at the park and ride car park and went to see my revered first mother-in-law.
Later in the week some of us walked up Dunkery Beacon, and we visited Dunster Mill and went round  Dunster Castle, which was probably the most exciting event of the break - husband left his brolly there.  Yes we needed umbrellas all week.

Holidaying in Shropshire

At 9 o'clock in the evening, the children are at the top of the youth hostel, helping another child make a jigsaw. I sip a glass of rose and husband's had Severn Valley Railway Manor Ale. The dining room has just emptied of the last family to eat - another pair of grandparents and two of their grandchildren - so we're not the only potty people to revert to youth hostelling in old age.

Today husband drove us to the Long Mynd, then walked the children for an hour and a half over the hills while I drove on to a car park where we met up before visiting the Midlands Gilding Club just another mile over the moor. We enjoyed a filter coffee and I showed the children gliders - a Skylark 4 - I used to have one - and we watched people rigging a K6. Granddaughter got interested enough to start photographing gliders, inside and out, and their trailers too.

The weather wasn't yet good enough to launch anything, but you could see the clouds for miles, over to the sea. And the colours of the heather on the moor was beautiful. The vertiginous road up from Church Stretton provides wonderful views of the vale.

In the afternoon we visited Ludlow Castle where the children ran round merrily. Raf is being a pirate at the moment, so the castle gave him an opportunity to evade the navy, and to wave his (floppy orange) sword. Wearing a green bandanna, an orange plastic gun thrust into his trouser pocket and an orange tea sheet, he looks dressed the part.