Garden theatre, forest trails and urban beaches

I’ve been a bit distracted from the blog as I’ve been busy over the past fortnight rehearsing for a Prom with my chamber choir Chantage. But we survived the concert last night, so I’ll start catching up with a recap of last weekend. After our trip back from France, we had a lovely quite day back in Herne Hill.

The weather was glorious so we spent much of the day in Brockwell Park. We’d heard there was a children’s theatre performance taking place in the walled garden, so we headed up there to see what was going on. Turned out it was a production called “Goldilocks and the Three Endings” by a local company called Sixteen Feet. An “interactive fairy tale”, the children in the audience got to choose how the story progressed.

As soon as we arrived, Alex bumped into his friend, Rex – so they immediately became inseparable and followed the plot together. The performance took place throughout the garden, and even though it was nearly 90 minutes long and the weather was absolutely boiling, the children were all engrossed:

Even Sophie seemed to enjoy the spectacle (although she seemed to equally enjoy trying to pull all the petals off the carefully arranged flowers!). Alex and Rex happily chatted to Goldilocks as we gathered for each scene!

The next day we were off for our second mini break of the holiday – a trip to my parents’ new house in Greens Norton, Northamptonshire. We wasted no time on arrival, and immediately tucked into ice cream in their new garden:

I swear my children are at their happiest when they have ice cream:

The next morning we headed to Salcey Forest just 20 minutes away from their new home. Alex and Sophie had a great time clambering around the adventure playground, Alex being particularly brave on the high ropes!

But best of all was the Gruffalo Trail around the woods, created to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the brilliant story!

We did manage to find the gruffalo, and had a lovely walk in the woods along the way.

A bit of a navigational error meant we struggled to find our way back to the cafe and car park, but Sophie and Alex made the mot of the slightly longer walk by splashing in every puddle they found and getting completely drenched!

Thankfully, we did make it back to the cafe – and enjoyed a delicious lunch and cake. I can see us making many visits to Salcey in the future!

With Hurricane Bertha making herself felt across the UK, the weather on Sunday was horrendous. So we headed down to Milton Keynes to have a play on the indoor beach there. Fresh from their French experience, the children set straight to work building sand castles. Sadly, the sand was too dry, so Alex got a bit frustrated! Thankfully there was a little funfair to keep him occupied before the drive home to London.

Back in London, we had a quick turn around to get into town for an early dinner with our Canadian family, Linda and Jenny who were visiting the UK for a few days. Jenny did a fabulous job keeping Alex occupied for a lengthy meal which got very close to his bedtime!