Aaargh!
The Easter Holidays have started, my house has been invaded by children, some of which are not mine and chaos reigns.
Jemma and Laura had a brief taste of what the next two weeks could hold for me on Sunday, when our attempt at “ladies that lunch” disintegrated into a free for all, sandwich bribes, stolen biscuits, spilt coffee and Jemma taking one for the team, when she deflected a large exercise ball from smashing the table with the back of her head! (Thanks Jemma and I’ll apologise again for my slack jawed inability to warn you of the incoming missile, despite watching it approach in slow motion.) Oh how we laughed.... Thank God!
Parents out there will sympathise with the now familiar feelings of excitement and dread that school holidays bring. How can I keep them entertained? Can my home physically take this kind of bombardment for the next fortnight? I want to get them out for the day but why is everythings so expensive? and wherever I do end up everywhere is full to bursting with everyone having the same idea!
Aaaargh!!
Well I’m not going to list a dozen days out to the same old places, that would be pointless, instead I’m going to tell you my secret...
Not really , I won't be turning to the bottle just yet!
No, this holiday when everyone else is queuing for ice-cream and juggling for position to get the best view of the invisible mountain goats or stressing at the entry prices of yet another theme park, my family and I shall be Geocaching, or as my friend succinctly puts it, “using state of the art multimillion pound technology to find Tupperware.”
No I have not gone mad, this is what we do.
Our first attempts were not always successful, probably because we were using my Dads satnav, but it is very addictive, and the £60 we spent on our Etrex gps navigator has probably saved us hundreds of pounds on days out. (most of the new phones have gps on them now and there’s lots of apps out there to get you started).
We love it because it gets us outdoors, having our own mini adventures, exploring places off the beaten track that we would never find time to before, more often than not we end up repeating the mantra “I never even knew this was here!”
The girls love it, we sold it to them as treasure hunting and they are as addicted as us, there’s something magical about finding a battered old box under a rock in the middle of nowhere and swapping one piece of priceless treasure for another. (Or in most cases a plastic novelty cracker toy, but you never know...)
Ok so I can dream I'd find something as lovely as a Penny Masquerade trinket but if you’d asked me last year if I’d be happy to wade across a river and sneak past a herd of angry cows to find a clue that may or may not lead to a plastic spiderman, I would have laughed in your face, but now I’m already pulling on my wellies ready to go!!
Ok so it’s not the most craft filled post ever but if you click on the pic's you’ll find some fantastic Yorkshire Made stuff and I hope I've inspired you to get out and about exploring more of this beautiful county that we’re lucky enough to call home!
