I completely forgot to mention the highlight of our week long Summer in the last blog post – a trip to Hever Castle…  What a glorious place!  I’ve intended going for years, but never quite made it, although we have cycled past the entrance a couple of times in fitter days!

With the weather hot and sunny, we decided we couldn’t possibly spend a Sunday in central London, so we headed South to check it out. The gardens were absolutely stunning.  Alex managed to guide Matt to the centre of the big maze (yes, really!) – and he even managed to behave for long enough for us all to enjoy touring the castle itself (although he didn’t like to be restricted to the roped path through the ancient rooms, preferring to try and sneak underneath to try and climb on the antique furniture).  Thankfully we weren’t thrown out – and survived to enjoy a quick lunch, trip to the play area and big ice cream.

Alex’s absolute highlight of the day was the water maze – a network of raised wooden pathways through a shallow marsh area, with various sprinklers and water shoots ready to soak you if you stepped on the wrong path!  He got soaked, and it was quite an effort to drag him away back to the car!

Here’s a slideshow of a few pics from the day (frustratingly, Matt and I both seemed to forget how to use our decent SLR camera, so most of the pics we took didn’t make the cut)