After school on Friday, the cubs and I made a dash for the station loaded with book bags, one gigantic holdall of weekend stuff, the EldestCub's islabike (not the road bike, after consultation) and a fistful of orange cardboard. We did battle with the X-country dangly space and the utter twit sat in and refusing to move out of our reserved seats (we virtually got a round of applause when he finally admitted defeat and moved!) and duly arrived at Derby station to be met by jogler and whisked away to joglerville for a weekend of utterly delightful silliness and being generally spoiled rotten.
Firstly, it must be noted that there was CAIK
And then there were bikes
(NYM lot - please note the mildly appropriate bike that jogler provided for me to go play on the mild COR that was to follow!)
There was mild fettling
There was a very happy SmallestCub since he got to go on a 'proper' bike ride with me and his brother.
There may have been bridges
and a spot of filthy bike swapping
(yes, that is jogler riding a 24" wheeled Islabike!)
And I may have found a solution to the problem of how to tour with two cubs - Eldest likes a challenge!
And he liked towing the trailer
almost as much as his brother liked being in it!
We got to ride with the Centre Of the Universe
and Alan and Marj
There was a spot more filthy bike swapping
and another bridge
or two
or three
On our way to the excellent Ramblers Retreat, where the roolz state that thou shalt photograph the food
and, ideally, send photographic evidence to our international correspondent so that it can be his turn to hate us, just a little bit, for once...
Then puddings the size of small children's heads.
And remarkably fine treacle tart for me
with splendid looking crumble for TCotU
Then, while jogler and marj went on two of the bikes to collect the cars since the trailer and trailer-towing cannondale had experienced some slight technical issues preventing riding the last wee bit back to the start, me and the rest of the kids wandered through woods and scrambled on muddy banks and hit nature with a stick and threw Stuff in water
A quick trip back to joglerville, then out again - bikeless this time - to chez Gordy where there was FIRE
and party lights
and frankly ludicrous quantities of food, including bonfire soup and homity pie
(photographs of which may well have been sent internationally to make Deano REALLY hate us - since he'd said that he could cope with the jealousy so long as we weren't being fed that!)
There may also have been experimentation with the use of many not-designed-for-the-purpose tools to crack nuts, and the burning of mildly to seriously inappropriate Stuffs in the name of Science. And entertainment.
A magical Saturday.
