Helmsley

We’ve just come back from a very nice week away seeing people, and it’s a bit weird arriving home on Friday rather than Sunday, but it means that all the tedious unpacking, washing, catching up on sleep and so on can be done before I go back to work, plus I think it was just about the right length of time (or rather, just about the maximum comfortable sleep debt).

Up to near York to see my godson T and family. We had hoped to leave on Friday night, which turned into 9 a.m. on Saturday, then 10, then err… 12.30 from our local Tesco. Ho hum. Looooads of fog on the way up, but otherwise a good trip and lovely to get there. Playing, chatting, etc. then happened. On Sunday I got to see T’s dad Paul preach at a small fairly recently rebuilt chapel in York, which was great and reminded me of some important things that I’d managed to forget. The children and mums joined us in York, via bendy buses, at a very nice veggie restaurant called El Piano that serves all sorts of things (onion bhargis, veggie shepherd’s pie, falafel, etc.) in tapas size helpings, so we ordered loads of different things and everyone had something they liked. Back to T’s house (more bendy buses) to be in for some other local friends from college whom we hadn’t seen for ages. We stayed till Monday lunchtime, which meant we could pick T up from school and say goodbye properly.

We then headed off to Helmsley youth hostel, where we joined a few other families as odd as us i.e. other home educators for a splendid NicCamp. A pottered about being cute, the others largely disappeared to play with friends / DSs / do craft things. There was Christmas lunch for 37, lots of cakes and mulled wine for those who liked it, playing music and singing, a birthday party and secret Santa. It snowed, twice, properly: decent snowball fights and snowmen and lots of people to do it with. A got her first experience of snow, which will end up on Flickr soon. The highlight for me, other than the chats and cake, was watching and singing along with Mama Mia with more-or-less lubricated friends after the children had gone to bed. It was projected onto a wall by equipment that registered its protest by having a sulk afterwards.

On Friday, after packing, cleaning, loading into cars etc. we tried to get to Helmsley Castle, but got no further than the gift shop as apparently the site was too icy. It had some impressive swords – that we didn’t buy (my excuse was that none was useful for Kentwell) – and a rulers ruler that we did buy. Katy had hoped to meet up with some imaginary friends there, but weather and illness had put them off.

She was also meant to meet some more imaginary friends at Rievaulx Abbey, so we pootled off there. The manager of the Helmsley gift shop had checked it was open for us, and which road to take, so we got there OK despite the snow and ice. They gave us each a phone-like thing with an audio commentary, and we had the place to ourselves. K and L really got into the commentary, but J was in too much of an odd mood to appreciate it, and flitted from thing to thing in the little museum in a rather annoying way. (The museum is small but really good, with hands-on things for the children, plus enough other stuff for adults.) I hadn’t expected it to be so big or to have so much still standing, and the pictures of what it might have looked like in its day, plus the fact that Katy and the children had recently gone to Ely Cathedral to do a day on monks meant it wasn’t just a pile of old stones. The whole site covered in several inches of snow, with no-one else around, was magical although we were all glad of the warming power of tea and cake in the tea-room afterwards.

An uneventful and fog-free trip home, an excellent veggie sausage omelette cooked by my gorgeous wife and then bed. A nice trip away.