On the Trail

The children had to wait until Easter Monday for their Easter egg hunt at home. Thankfully it was dry and we were able to hide a few eggs out in the back garden. I asked T if he wanted to take part this year. 'Ah yeah if it means chocolate at the end of it,'  was the answer but in reality S did most of the seeking out and when she found each hiding place T, who was following closely behind, just added his egg to his haul and then waited for the next find to be discovered. I suppose that's what happens when you get to 13.

On Tuesday I had to go into town as I wanted to buy some paint from Laura Ashley. I'm going to start decorating our bedroom soon and as they currently have 30% off their paint range it's too good an offer to miss.
Whilst in town S and I went to the art gallery as this is another venue on the Lego trail which we started on Friday in Winchester.
Before the construction of the Itchen Bridge crossing over to the centre of town from our side of the water would mean using the Floating Bridge, information here  if you want to learn more about this cable ferry. 
Hanging in the art gallery is a painting of the Floating Bridge by L S Lowry, which can be seen here and this has been used to create a table top sized Lego model.

And so to today. I didn't want to venture too far so we decided to visit one of the small green open spaces in the City, one we hadn't been to for a long while. It seems that a relatively new group have formed with the purpose of caring for the area and there have been a few changes since our last visit. The helicopter climbing frame has been painted and I was coaxed into climbing into it and no I won't be sharing the photos or the video T took of me trying to get out of it afterwards! There are two of these new noticeboards decorated with wood carvings.

But the most exciting addition by far was the discovery of a rope swing. My oh my they had so much fun with this. Huge smiles, big belly laughs and nearly uncontrollable giggling at one stage. Priceless.

Whilst the children were flinging themselves around I went round the corner and hid a few eggs (thanks Diane!) for them to find. You may be able to spot a blue egg hidden in this tree next to T. This was his last egg to find and he had walked past it countless times before he finally found it, the look on his face says it all!

My mum came along with us

and we reminisced about the times when we have been here in the past and T and S could fit in these baby seats on the swings and not just perch on top of them like they did today.

Another discovery was this huge burnt tree. It looked  (although you can't really tell from my rubbish photo) like some kind of multi legged spider and would make an excellent den.

We went in for a closer look and saw there are hundreds of burnt looking cones still attached to it

and the way the bark had come away from the branches here it immediately reminded me of the tiger bread you can buy from bakeries in most of the big supermarkets. Maybe a good spot for a picnic later in the year, perhaps the summer holidays when the sun may finally make an appearance for longer than a couple of hours.