I’m back again, although a little bit late with my Living Arrows post this week. After another fairly quiet week (apart from the addition of a swimming lesson), on Sunday we headed up to the Lake District for another couple of nights of camping.

To be honest it wasn’t the best few nights – the campsite wasn’t great, mostly due to a very sloping pitch, we had a lot of rain, and the boys were a bit whingey the whole time!

But on Monday it was Gabe’s birthday. He enjoyed opening his presents in the tent in the morning but then was miserable when we went for a walk from the campsite to nearby Arnside Tower. It was a bit disappointing to be fair – the ruined tower looked quite interesting from a distance but when we got there there wasn’t much to see, and there were ‘dangerous building’ signs all over so we couldn’t even explore inside.

Toby quite enjoyed himself though and both the boys had fun talking to each other with the walkie talkies that my brother bought Gabe for his birthday.

After lunch back at the campsite we got the train over to Grange-Over-Sands where we went to see Barry’s parents for the first time since the start of the year. It was only a 5 minute train ride but the boys enjoyed it, and then we had a pleasant walk through Grange looking for Pokemon on our way.

To be safe we stayed in the garden when visiting with Nana and Grandad, and luckily the rain held off while we were there. We had some birthday cake brownie that I had taken with us and the walkie talkies came out again!

We had to pack the tent up in the rain on Tuesday morning but we were home and in the dry by lunch time. I’m really glad we managed to get away camping again this summer but it was just a shame the site wasn’t great and the weather wasn’t on our side.

I don’t think we’ll be camping again this year, but we’ve had a bit of practice now and we’ll be ready to try some longer trips next year, and maybe go a bit further afield.

For now though, we’ve just got two weeks of the summer holidays left. Next week we’ve got forest school again and another swimming lesson booked and then all being well the boys will be back at school on the 2nd September. It feels very strange to think of them both being back after the year we’ve had but I’m trying not to worry about it and just hoping they do get to go back as planned.

Until next week then….

This is my ninth year taking part in this linky celebrating childhood, based on a poem by Kahlil Gibran, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” .

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.