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Monday 26 August 2013

Burrs country park

I took the kids and the dog to Burrs country park for a little adventure. As a young lad, I used to knock about there quite a lot with my mates, swimming in the river and what not. It is also a great place, full of Wildlife day and night. 

Here they are playing on the river bank..
 
Great scenery if I may say so. 

There are plenty of things to do here such as a park for the kids, activities include canoeing, abseiling, orienteering and the place has the East Lancs Railway running through it. You can fish in the River Irwell or there is a lodge for coarse fishing. 

Louis has an affection for Bats and this is one of the best local places near Radcliffe where we live as Burrs is situated just outside of Bury. We have a bat detector and as amateur bat hunters, we can definitely identify at least three Bat species.

On our little adventure yesterday Rowan ran through a small nettle bush so he was upset as you can imagine. So I then thought a little bit of education wouldn't go a miss,(even if he is only three) :).
He helped me look for a doc leaf and I Showed the kids what one looked like, the best place to find one and how to use it to take away the sting from the nettles. To which they were both surprised at how quick Rowan's stings vanished and stopped itching his legs. 'Result!'.

I noticed a kingfisher was opposite us on the riverbank and saw that it was darting into a hole back and forth, back and forth. We then investigated and found a nice little but long hole dug into the raised part of the riverbank. As I neared the nest, the parent was looking toward us from high up in a tree on the opposite side of the river. There was an obvious alarm sounding call from the chick(s) coming from inside the nest. 
 
Here it is..
 
The keen eye will make it out but see how camouflaged the chick actually is.

The kids loved hearing the baby(s) in the nest. 

I would recommend Burrs country park to anybody, there is a great pub and a caravan site that overlooks the Steam Railway. Young and old can get real fulfilment from this local haven for fun and above all for me, the abundant thriving wildlife.

Monday 19 August 2013

Lollibop

Here's me, with one of my Idols..


Yes, Shaun the Sheep.

We arrived at Lollibop 2013 and I don't know who was most excited, Karen (aka grumpyishmum), Louis (aka footymad5yearold), Rowan (aka asbo), or me, Ted (aka survivaldaddy). 

As we came through the gate, opposite was a stall where your children, yes children had the opportunity to make a wind mill. And neither Louis or Rowan seemed bothered at all about the prospect, however, (grumpyishmum), who I will now call (childlikeishmum) was very excited indeed and proceeded to make one and got right into it.

As we moved on, we learned from the schedule that Rastamouse and the Eazy Crew were due to perform so off to the main stage we went. Brilliant, we love Rastamouse and what a performance it was. Watching Rastamouse gave me a craving for carribean food, (yes I am odd), so off I went in search to the food stall area and found a Jamaican food stall and had mutton curry, rice an peas followed by a can of ginger beer. In a word, Awesome :)

As the day went on, we looked around all of the stalls an attractions which looked very good and interactive for kids and adults alike but and it's a very big BUT, the queues were horrendous for just about everything. Take the National Geo tent. They were educating us about exotic animals and letting kids have hold of Tarantulas which was all brilliant but unless you were 7 feet tall, there was no chance of seeing anything if you weren't near the front. The presenter wasn't on a raised stage and the tent was very small indeed. I don't mean to pick on Nat Geo as such but that was as good an example as any. 

Moving on, Louis wanted his face painted so I took him to queue up for one while Childlikeishmum took Asbo to the Little Tykes playground and a look round some of the other stalls.

 After an hour of queueing, Louis got his face painted..
 

He was very pleased in the end.
 
Rowan looked a little apprehensive about who Shaun's friends were..


..but decided that he'd stand next to one and look at Shaun from a distance. :)

After Louis had his face painted like Spiderman, we then found Asbo and Mummy only to find that Asbo wanted his face doing also but we had to deny him because there was no way we were queueing up again.
Sorry Rowan, we promised to get it done tomorrow, as you do.

Overall, I think that Lollibop was very good indeed and well organised but I definitely wouldn't have liked to have visited on the Saturday as it would have been a lot busier and the queues even more horrendous than the Friday.