Pieday

On Wednesday we went to Cupcake Lane. My birthday party is going to be there.

We're making cherry pie. 

I am kneading the pastry dough.

We went to Bratch Locks on a beautiful sunny day.

We saw a boat.

Mittens is showing you the lovely sky.

Rolling out the pastry

This is a lattice top on the cherry pie.

These were the pitted cherries (the stones are out)

This & that

Gorgeous Autumn day for a bike ride. We went the other way up the railway walk, towards Himley.

We took our picnic to Bratch Locks, where we weren't expecting to see any boatlife as Dimmingsdale is closed, but we were very surprised to see NB Dream Maker. We had a nice chat with the Dream Maker people, who have a residential mooring by Awbridge Lock, this side of Dimmingsdale which is why they could get as far as Bratch. 

Tettenhall Wood School had an open Maths morning so we did some maths games with Ellen. Sarah also enjoyed playing in their fabulous playground.

We've started preparing for Christmas. This year, Sarah will be printing our wrapping paper.

Playing and a boat watch

Code Blue: Mum

Code Green: Sarah

We've decided that one of the best parts of Home Ed is all the deserted parks and places we can go to. 

We decided to go to Baggeridge Park. We hadn't been for ages so I stuffed my pockets full of small change knowing how rapidly the car park charges increase there. However, it still wasn't enough. Now you have a choice. You can stay for 1 hour for £1.60 or all day for £2.60. We paid for 1 hour. You can get a 6 month pass for £22 or a 1 year pass for £38. We'll consider that. As we only had one hour, we stayed in the playground, ate our lunch and enjoyed the space and peace. 

Incidentally, if you're thinking that we do an awful lot of playing in parks and having fun, you'd be right. How much quality 1:1 time with the teacher does a child normally get in a class of 30, during the average day? We do our writing, maths and Spanish for around half an hour or so every morning, while Sarah has her teacher all to herself. During our car journeys, we have some lovely music lessons too, courtesy of Classic FM. 

I made a sandloopsy and I sprinkled sand on top.

We noticed a funny texture in the sand, and realised it was caused by the heavy rain a few minutes previously. 

It was Ellen's 10th birthday, so we celebrated with our first pizza meal of the week. The next one will be on Saturday. 

NB Legend

Back to Bratch locks again for lunch today, with a different viewpoint as the lock man was strimming our patch. Sarah chose the baguettes whilst shopping in Lidl, and we filled them with goodies for our regular picnic. 

Whilst there, Sarah asked if Dave and Ann-Marie (our friends who live on their boat) had been through Bratch locks. I said that they were there when we first tried to find their boat 2 1/2 years ago. But they must have heard we were coming..... We found them in Brewood. There's the lovely NB Legend in Bratch middle lock. 

Then we got talking about another kind of boat: the working boat. A boat came past us with lots of shiny brass engineering exposed. Daddy reckons that, as we saw only boats going UP the locks, that they were on their way home from the Stourport festival. I googled a picture of NB Alton, a boat which delivers coal and diesel to other boats. This belongs to a different Ann Marie, and Brian, who were the very first people I met when I joined the Citroen 2CV club 23 years ago. 

We walked down the canal to Bumblehole Lock. Very little compared with the grand Bratch. We noticed a bee hive next to it. Sarah asked where the first lock was built, so out came Google again. Well, the first major British canal was the Bridgewater which opened in 1761. Designed by James Brindley, it was used to transport coal to Manchester.

The first locks were on the Trent and Mersey canal, built in 
1776. These locks measured 22.1m long by 2.3m wide, which set the dimensions for the boats which could travel through them,
which then became known as narrowboats. (NB used as a prefix for the boat's name). 

Mom's birthday

We went to TFM farm shop

I had a delicious chocolate cake at Apley Farm 

me and Dad saw a donkey



I went on a bouncy castle

we saw cows and chickens

  we saw loads of things 

(that 'thing' is an alpaca, one of Mummy's favourite animals!)

and went to bratch locks

where we had a really posh picnic which we'd bought at Apley Farm shop.

and the cake was yummy. Rachel made this at Grandma's. 

the next day we went to st peters garden center where we saw 2 police bikes

LalaLittle Picnic

We went back to Bratch locks

 

The Lalalittles went too

 

and a farm shop we went to buy chicken food.

then made loopsy goodie bags

This week's timetable. If there were 5 cards with 'canal' on them, I think she'd be sitting at Bratch locks every day of the week. 

Seeing stars

Bratch Locks is now Sarah's new favourite place. 

We take our lunch there and watch the boats going up and down. We like to see the names of the boats. This pretty boat is called 'Etoile du Nord' or 'North Star'. Coincidence or an emerging pattern, along with Pegasus? What with Sarah's love of the moon, there's got to be a future project in there somewhere.  
We also discussed how to spot the difference between live-in and holiday boats. We decided that holiday boats tend to have less 'stuff' on top (eg. plants) and they have lots of scratches down the sides. The hire company name and telephone number are also a give-away. I noticed another difference which I didn't mention to Sarah. Holiday boats seem to have a plentiful supply of alcohol on board, in particular, Old Speckled Hen. I suspect live-in boats also have their own fair share of alcohol, but they probably  store it more carefully, at least until after 5 o'clock. 
Don't worry about the Loopsies, by the way. 
They're always there, sometimes it's just a matter of spotting them. 
Sarah decides on her own timetable each week. After she has done her maths, writing, and now Spanish each morning, and completed her household tasks, we can carry on and do the fun stuff. Here's what we're doing this week. 

Now back to those damsons. We've found a cool way of stoning them. 

Make a cut in each one down to the stone. 

Crush them under a plate. 
. 

Remove the stone easily

Much better than fishing them out from your hot jam, or breaking your teeth on a stray one. Sarah says she's going to share her damson crumble recipe with you soon. 

Meanwhile, for my own reference, here's my damson gin recipe:

Pierce 500g damsons liberally and place in an airtight container. Add 125g sugar and 70cl gin. Agitate (easily done in our house), pop the lid on and forget for 3 months. Alternatively, just drink the gin straight off and forget everything.