Eco-family Explorers

En partant pour cette année d'aventures, je n'aurais jamais pensé à dire "et oui, il faut absolument qu'on ait des moments ou nous ne sommes pas tous ensemble, cela va être essentiel"... Et bien oui.  En septembre, j'étais déjà partie en France pendant 48 heures avec Nathanael- j'avais des rendez-vous, et c'était lui qui avait le plus de mal avec notre année sabbatique. Cela lui a fait un bien fou - il n'a plus le mal de pays.. (ou plutôt des copains!). Certes, il a envie de les retrouver, mais cela ne lui fait plus de la peine, comme avant. Mais bon, le but de ce voyage là, ce n'était pas de passer un moment seule avec Nathanael.  Nous venons de passer 10 jours avec ma belle mère et son compagnon, Ian, dans le nord-ouest d'Angleterre. Et là, quelle bonheur, ils nous ont proposé une journée de baby-sitting. Nous en avons profité pour faire une randonnée - sous la pluie, le brouillard, j'ai fini dans des vêtements tremp

At this point, in order to understand our choice of destinations it might be useful to introduce you to Atack-opoly A gift that sat unopened on a shelf for many years has become our overall plan for this trip. It's a make-your-own monopoly type game which we customised with a photos of all the places we want to visit, as voted for by each member of the family. Myriam said she wanted to go fish (sic) and so Fish & Relax is the 'Free Parking' square. If you zoom in a bit you'll see that Snowdonia National Park is on the left hand side and so that's where we went. (We're not doing the spaces in the order they are on the board, nor should you pay too much attention to the East/North/South/West thing.) We stayed at the southern foot of Snowdon in a lovely campsite which is currently fighting for survival. Beddgelert the nearest village kept us supplied with cakes and coffee and the other things you need when you go out for a cycle in the pouring rain. Onc

A couple of you are struggling with translating our posts. If you read our pages from our website, you can simply put the page link into Google Translate . Copy and paste the URL of our latest blog post from the address bar of your browser into Google Translate, like this: On the right hand side of the page first choose then language you want to read the post in and then click on Translate or the link displayed in the grey box. This should give you an automatic translation into the language that you specified. It's not perfect but it should give you at least a gist of what we want to say. If you receive an email with our post in it, either copy/paste the text into google translate directly, or else click on the title of the blog, which leads to our website, and then you can follow the steps above. ------------------------------------ Quelques uns d'entre vous ont du mal à traduire nos pages vers le français. Si vous lisez nos articles à partir de notre site web, vou

Depuis lundi, nous voici de retour à Wrightington, chez ma belle mère. Mardi, James et moi aurions souhaité passer la journée à la maison - cela faisait presqu'une semaine qu'on n'avait plus de Wifi😟 (oui oui, on s'est rendu compte qu'on est des accros!) Or, on s'est rendu compte que pour garder la sérénité dans notre famille, les enfants ont besoin de sortir tous les jours. Je me rappelle d'une phrase que j'ai entendu il y a un bon moment  - la seule façon d’être une famille positive est de passer au moins deux heures dehors par jour. Donc, direction la ferme de Greenslate , pour un après-midi en 'forest school' pour Myriam.. un atelier parents-enfants.  Nous avons utilisé des matériaux naturels pour un atelier art, ramassé le bois pour notre feu de camp, grillé des chamallows sur un morceau de bois que Myriam a taillé elle même, et terminé avec des jeu du style cache cache et chat. Entre-temps, James, Samuel et Nathanael sont parti

 If the primary objective of our year-long road trip is to give our children a taste of life in the UK, then our two days in and around Ravenglass were a specialist module in English holidays. We arrived having driven down the western edge of the Lake District and made the most of the good weather by heading down to the beach. Ravenglass is actually on an estuary of three rivers and the beach is really the banks of the river Esk, but Samuel was on a total mission to build sandcastles and so that's what we did. The rising tide provoked a conversation about the challenge posed by rising sea levels and the link to climate change. Their sandcastle was swiftly protected by substantial sea defences that gave it another 10 minutes of existence.  Paddling in the semi-saline waters of the river Esk and the Irish sea while complaining about the inconsistent structural characteristics of the estuary sand somehow captured the essence of an English beach holiday. I don't know ab

After Ullswater, we travelled South-West to the Ravenglass Camping and Caravanning Club site , which had been recommended to us by family. To be honest, we probably wouldn't have picked this site out of all that the CCC has to offer in the Lake District, if it weren't for their recommendation. For starters, it's not next to a lake! We also didn't like the fact that the play area is not within the campsite boundaries.  We're glad that they sold it to us. First things first - the practicalities. The play area is lovely for young children - probably up to about age 7/8 maximum. It's not campsite property, it is run by the local council, and is just next to the Ravenglass train station. So if you're a steam train fan, you'll be delighted to spend hours supervising your children here - the play area even has a train theme to it. There's also a large field opposite, great for ball games and wood exploration. However, not so suitable for

I made some vegetable broth for lunch and this is how. Warning : this is not a recipe. If this gets a good reception then I might try more detailed recipes but, for a start, I don't have a weighing scale so that could be tricky. PS. I'm also experimenting with software. If this works then I'll get rid of the watermarks in the video.