Long Weekend: Center Parcs Sherwood Forest

Elise spent the week learning how to write recipes for disasters.  Her class started by learning a recipe for a disastrous family picnic (stir fed up parents, arguing children, and crying baby together in car for 45 minutes; add a tyre puncture; mix together with ants swarming your picnic items, and wash down with a thunderstorm).  She adapted the approach to write a recipe for a disastrous Roman invasion.  It involved a cowardly Roman emperor, poorly trained legionaries, a courageous Celtic queen (i.e., Boudicca), bold and well-trained Celtic warriors, and a muddy battlefield mixed with large quantities of spilled Roman blood.  

I share the story because it's fun insight for me into what she's learning about British history.  It's also almost how this weekend turned out.  We wanted to reward for the girls for how well they've handled the transition to the UK.  We had several ingredients that could have turned it into a disaster: booking the weekend without travel insurance on Monday night, Charis getting a scarlet fever scare on Tuesday that resulted in missing school on Wednesday, parking lot traffic driving to Center Parcs through Nottingham on Friday night, a toddler who decided (after we booked the nonrefundable weekend) to potty train but then wasn't taking to it well, resulting in stress for both toddler and mother, and several "weekends away when potty training are not ideal" discussions.

In the end, though, the ingredients did not produce a disastrous family vacation.  Clare turned a major corner in her potty training while we were on our weekend away.  Most importantly, the girls really enjoyed our time.  So, with a bit of relief that the disaster didn't materialize, here are some of the highlights.

We went to the Center Parcs resort at Sherwood Forest.  I found out about it during one of the not infrequent conversations in our office with friendly colleagues who are happily giving advice to the American secondees about places to visit.  This one came highly recommended from both an older colleague who had been there as a parent, and a younger colleague who had been there as a child.  Their only caution was the cost.  They said it costs a small fortune.  It does.  But we haven't hit our travel budget for much since we moved here, mostly because so many of our activities have involved time with friends and family.  And we wanted to do something special for the girls besides take them on a hike and hoping their active imaginations would take over and provide lots of fun (ala Elvaston Castle).

We had a 3 bedroom cabin with kitchen, living room, and dining room.  It as nicely set back from the road, and they do an excellent job of blending the cabins into the trees.  We finally figured out that this was one of the first times we've been in the UK and not seen lodging constructed from brick.  The cabins are also constructed to give a strong feeling of privacy.  Our cabin was actually connected to several others, but the paths from the road only go to one or two at a time.  In our case, the path splits to ours, and to the one on the right that was in a separate building.

Center Parcs makes a point of telling you when you check in that they want the roads within the resort to be free for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.  They have a parking lot at the edge of the resort where they ask you to put your car once you've unloaded at your cabin.  The problem is that like most places in England, parking is at a premium.  It's less than straightforward to find an open spot during the daytime, much less if you arrive after dark.  We parked our Golf on the side of the road in front of the cabin on Friday night.  Saturday morning, we and about 15 other cars on our road had polite papers on our car window from Center Parcs security asking us to move our car to the parking lot as soon as convenient.  Somewhat to my surprise, I did find a spot without having to creatively use the side of the parking lot road.

Center Parcs is a high class resort with loads of activities available for their guests.  Naturally, we took advantage of that by jumping into things as soon as possible Saturday morning.  Okay, maybe not.  After all, if you've got a whole chalkboard in your kitchen, who wouldn't want to spend an hour creating art on it?  Especially when you can divide it into three areas and almost have both of your sisters creating art with you without a squabble?

We did eventually hit the trails to go exploring.  Unlike their father, the girls are still committed to walking on paths instead of taking shortcuts through grass or dirt.  Even though it was probably less than 25 meters from our door to the path into the resort, they dutifully walked out to the street, up the street for a few meters, and turned onto the path.

Once on the path, they started running.

They did slow to a walk eventually.

When I asked my colleague about his experience at Center Parcs, he told me it would take more arms and legs than I've got to fund all the activities we could do.  He also said the reservation fee gave us access to the water park.  We made it to water park shortly after it opened at 10 am Saturday morning.  We left after a couple hours to have lunch and let the girls rest.  We went back for a couple hours, came home for supper, slept, went back Sunday morning, returned to the cabin to pack, and went back one more time before driving home.

There wasn't much to the weekend besides the cabin and the water park.  Except for the birds.  There seemed to be a wider variety of typical English birds here than places like Melbourne and Tissington. The highlight was definitely this friendly swan who showed up to investigate our back window, and then entertained Elise and Charis when they came over to see him.

This little guy doesn't show up much in the photo.  I'm not sure what kind of bird he (or she) is.

I recognized this one.  It's a goose (I think).

I didn't recognize this one.  It might be a grebe.  I saw one on our Tissington hike, but didn't get a good photo.

Ducks are pretty common here.  The uncommon thing about the ducks at Center Parcs was getting to see so many of them in flight.  Unfortunately I didn't have my camera when I saw them flying.  Several times we saw them with heads down and tails up, going after something in the water.  The girls got a kick out of that because they know the duck characters Upside and Down from Michael Morpugo's Mudpuddle Farm stories.  I didn't get a photo of that either.  So the ducks get a boring photo of two drakes swimming.

The other interesting thing about the birds at Center Parcs was how active they were.  Several of our walks took us past groups of very conversational ducks and geese.  It was a different experience of walking with birds around than just having them mob you if you've got bread bits to throw (which we didn't).  The highlight of the active birds thing for me was watching two swans chase a goose out of the water up onto the bank.  I didn't pull the camera out quickly enough to catch the swans with wings flared, or the goose in mad flight out of the water.  Here's the satisfied swans calming down, and the goose being consoled by another goose on the bank.

We spent most of our time at the water park.  It's a water park, so naturally the kid's play area has a pirate ship theme.  We're in Sherwood Forest, so naturally Robin Hood's got to be worked into things.  Hence playing in a pirate ship called Maid Marian.

On the spur of the moment I walked into the swimming gear store to look at goggles (Clare lost the good pair I'd bought from IUPUI a while ago, so I figured I'd check and see what they had for adults).  The girls swindled that quick visit into goggles for each of them.  It did involve a little bargaining where we agreed they'd each chip in a couple pounds from their allowance.  Clare's exempt from cost sharing because she's only got 10 pence in her piggy bank.  It took the girls a while to figure out the whole goggle thing.  They tried them on the slide in a few different configurations.

Partially on the eyes.

Off the face but still around the neck.

And completely off.

Clare spent pretty much the whole time around the Maid Marian pirate ship and slide.  This meant the rest of us spent quite a bit of time there as well.

The girls got creative with this by posting themselves at the bottom of the slide to watch for her.

And to cheer her when she came down.

Other than a couple trips down bigger slides, Elise and Charis spent the rest of their time in the pool.  They figured out how to keep their goggles on underwater.  Here's Charis.  This is a kid who freaked out when we took her to her first swimming lesson at IUPUI two years ago.  She's come a long way, thanks to some great instructors at the IUPUI Natatorium and Butler.

Elise had comparable fun with the goggles.  She's worn them during swimming lessons in the US for a while.  This was the first time I've seen her really take advantage of the fact that goggles let you play under water for as long as you can hold your breath.  Both girls had fun in the pool, and I enjoyed watching them.

Quiet times in our family tend to involve lots of reading.  This trip was no exception.  Elise's class all got Children's Bibles when they went to the parish church in Melbourne.  Here's Charis reading it.  Yes - she's 5, and she's reading a book given to her 8 yr old sister.  Such is the unanticipated consequence of having her sit out of school for a month while we waited for the appeal to run its course.

Clare, not to be outdone by her older sisters, insisted on sitting down next to Kristine with her own book to read.

Elise had to give a presentation Monday morning about the goddess Diana.  We're still getting adjusted to what we perceive as very open-ended assignments in her class: You need to give a presentation in 6 weeks; see you then.  This one involved some pretty focused work every day for the week before it was due.  She did well, and it was less of a scramble than the assignment that was due right after we moved from our apartment in Darley Abbey into our house in Melbourne.  So I think we're making progress (Kristine and I on giving Elise small bits to complete each day, and Elise on completing those bits when she'd rather be reading Famous Five or Jacqueline Wilson).  By Sunday afternoon she was copying her rough draft into its final form.

Elise insisted on going to school in her uniform and changing into her costume for her presentation, so we didn't get to see her in it.  A few days later she and Charis decided to play a game where Charis was Diana and Elise was her pixie servant.  The stuffed animal in Charis's belt is Speedy.  Speedy is a squirrel who goes home with a different student every day.  He has a diary that the student writes in to record Speedy's adventures at their home.

Ingredients for a disastrous weekend not withstanding, I'm glad we made this trip.  The girls enjoyed themselves in the water, and Kristine and I enjoyed being able to do something special for them.  We've put them through an awful lot with this move, and they've done incredibly well.  This weekend was well deserved.

Family walk: Going to school

Kristine took her parents to Oxford for the day, so I got to walk the girls to school.  I've only done this a couple of times, so I decided to take advantage of the chance to capture this part our of life in Melbourne.  Clare didn't go to nursery since it's Wednesday (she goes Monday mornings).  I went ahead and walked up to Puddleducks so I could get Kristine's entire route.

Here's the elevation profile.  We start at ~310 feet, descend to ~190 feet at Melbourne Junior School, and then climb back to ~310 feet at our house.  RunKeeper says this is 1530 feet of elevation change. This is part of why I don't buy the 82 feet elevation change for our Tissington walk.  

DISCLAIMER: I took very few photos at the schools.  I would not be happy if I knew someone else was taking pictures of me or my children and posting them without my permission.  So I justified my self-conscious unwillingness to pull out my camera by saying I'm respecting other people's privacy.

 Off we go, down to the end of Hope Street.  This gap between us is pretty common.  Elise often goes a good bit ahead, with Charis behind her, then the parent with Clare in the stroller (in this case that was me).  Clare is fully capable of walking, which the end of this post will show.  But she's not trustworthy as far as focusing on the task at hand - walking to school.

You can't tell from the photo, but Commerce Street is actually a bit narrower than Hope Street.  It's relatively free of parked cars this morning when we're walking to school.  Most of the time it's not that empty.  There are usually cars parked on each side, which leaves just over one car space between them to drive.  The sidewalks are also pretty narrow.  If the garbage bins are out for collection, which they are today because it's a Wednesday, then it's a bit of a squeeze between the bin and the parked car.  Since I've got the stroller, I go around into the street.  The large number of cars gives Charis a chance to practice identifying cars from the emblems on the hood or back.  Today she's pointing out a Citroen.  She started doing this on her own shortly after we got here.  We usually get a running identification of cars during our walks through Melbourne.  I think she takes after my dad.

Most of the houses on the right (north) side of Commerce Street are terraced, which means they're all built into the same building.  The whole block we're walking down here has only one or two buildings on it.  The left (south) side of the street has fewer buildings, and generally 2 - 4 houses per building.  You can see one of them in the photo above.

The landscaping and buildings change quite a bit when we get onto George Street.  The houses are detached or semi-detached (duplexes in the US), and they have yards in the front (yards are in the back for houses on Commerce and Hope Street).  The street is also quite a bit wider - both the street itself and the sidewalks.

This is the stretch where Charis gets to take a break from walking.  She rides on a buggy board that flips down off the back of Clare's stroller.  This is a replacement for the double stroller we brought from the US (see below for what happened to it on the flight over).  We decided that the damaged stroller was a really good thing for us because of what we got with the compensation funds from United.  We got a smaller, much more maneuverable stroller that (a) is much easier to navigate through Melbourne, and (b) actually fits into the back of our Golf.  The buggy board gives us the functionality of letting Charis ride when she needs to.  She's riding less and less, but we don't have the clunkiness of taking Clare everywhere in the double stroller.  So thanks, United.

Our largest elevation change is the 1/4 mile stretch that takes us from George St into Melbourne proper.  There are a couple different routes we take.  Elise picks this morning, and she says we're taking Dunnicliff Lane (which also happens to be the funniest name we've seen so far).

More detached houses with front yards as we walk down Dunnicliff.  Pretty much all the front yards are flat.  Considering how steep this street is, that's quite impressive.

One of the reasons we like this route is that it's not through for vehicles.

We cross the main street through Melbourne (interesting enough it's called Derby Road) and walk down another footpath.  Elise has moved quite a bit ahead of the rest of us by now.

Our house is just off Cockshut Lane, which is one of the main roads around Melbourne.  We exit the footpath on the other, which is Station Road.  This is the route that I take on my bike when I'm going to work.  I would head straight, and eventually get to the cycle path.  We're heading to school, so we turn left.

Packhorse Road, which is where the schools are, gets pretty busy in the morning and afternoon because of all the families dropping off or picking up children.  That busyness is even more complicated because the road is pretty narrow, and there are so many cars parked on the right (west) side.  Effectively both directions of traffic have to share one lane by taking turns driving through the empty spaces.  In this case, the white car got there first so the oncoming car will pull over, wait for it to pass, and then drive through the opposing lane since the two parked cars are in the space it would typically drive.

Our first stop is at Melbourne Infant School.  We've got a few minutes before the bell is supposed to ring at 8:45, so we join the other families who are gathering on the playground behind the school.  Charis finds a couple friends and takes off to play with them.  Clare gets out of stroller heads across the playground.  I gather from watching her beeline toddle and her lack of being intimidated by the older kids that she's done this lots of times before.  Elise stands with me for a few minutes, and then finds a classmate (one of the many students at the next door junior school who are here to drop off younger siblings).  They go play with Clare.

Sometime around 8:45 the bell rings.  The Infant School students line up to go into school, and the families start to disperse.  The older siblings make their way to Melbourne Junior School (MJS).  Elise and her friend don't bother waiting for their parents.  Off they go.

There is more mingling at MJS as families arrive from the Infant School or make their way here to start the day.  The students are accompanied by adults who wait with them until they line up.  The vast majority of the adults are women - mostly mothers, with a few grandmothers.  There are a handful of fathers and grandfathers.  Part of our appeal to get Charis into the Infant School was being unwilling to leave our girls unattended before school.  It is encouraging for me to be here before school and see that nobody else leaves their child unattended either.

A group of  girls from Elise's year 3 class have all gathered together.  One of them has a younger sister at the Infant School who just had an accident on the playground this morning.  I hear something about falling, cutting her head, and needing an ambulance.  Her sister (Elise's classmate) is in tears.  The girls are gathered around her with hands on her shoulders, offering their support.

After a few minutes, the MJS head teacher comes out, blows a whistle, and points each class to their place to line up.  This is done by class name, not by year.  Each class is named after a tree.  There are two classes per year.  So you go across the playground before you get to Redwood (Elise's year 3 class) and Lilac (the other year 3 class).  As I watch the relative chaos of the playground quickly turn into lines of students, I have two thoughts.  The first is a memory of visiting my sister Michelle when she was studying at Cambridge, and she told me her instructors had hammered home the point that "English people love to queue!"  The second is the portion of Kate Fox's ethnography, Watching the English, where she has her students jump queues and record the reactions.

The lines of students file into the building, and Clare and I take off for Puddleducks, which shares a building with the local Cub and Boy Scout troops..  Puddleducks has been an unexpected perk of living in Melbourne.  We weren't planning on putting Clare into nursery while we were here.  A friendly mom at church made a passing comment of "Thank God for government funded nursery at age 3," to which we responded "Really?"  We found out about Puddleducks from a Rolls-Royce colleague who also had to appeal to get his second child into the Infant School (did I mention this seems like a rite of passage).  It's just up the street from the Infant and Junior Schools, so we're there within a couple minutes.

Clare goes on Monday mornings right now, which gives Kristine a couple hours to study for her pharmacy board certification.  There are enough other families with children in primary school and nursery that Clare recognizes classmates on the playground.  She pointed several of them out to me while we were waiting for Elise and Charis to get let into school.

We leave Puddleducks and head home via Queensway Road.  Sometimes Kristine and the girls come to school this way and go home via Donnington.  It's about the same distance, and having two routes adds some variety to the day.  Most of the houses on Queensway are detached.  The two big differences from the other streets we've walked on so far are (a) many more houses have driveways, and (b) there is grass between the sidewalk and the street.

We cross Derby Road again.  Budgens is the local grocery store where we'll often do a mid-week shopping trip to top up on supplies we eat through quickly (milk, bananas, bread ...).

By the time we get to the back end of Budgens, Clare is squirming to get out of the stroller.  "Daddy, I have to walk so I can have chocolate when we get home!"  I stop, let her out of the stroller, and she's off running up the steps.

This is North Street.  It's a bit narrower than Dunnington (certainly doesn't have as interesting a name), and has considerably less green.  Almost all the houses are terraced, although there are a couple at the top that have a driveway and garage.  This is also where we do our steep elevation change to climb back to our house.  I wouldn't know it's steep from watching Clare though.  She's continuing to run like it's flat.

Here's another view of Commerce Street.  When I cycle home, this corner is the "almost there" view of encouragement to my tired legs.  Clare has slowed to a walk by now, but has no interest in the stroller.

One last turn and we're back onto Hope Street.  Clare, sensing chocolate is at hand, takes off running again.  The chocolate button from Aldi is well earned.