Friday 30 April 2010

Corfe Castle and Choo-Choo Trains

Hi, sorry I've been a bit absent from blogland again. Been busy with work, which then meant the housework piled up and had to be dealt with! Tonight I'll catch you up on some photos of my daughter, and tomorrow I'll post a few creative pics. I'll leave my pocket-sized plans until Monday as I haven't managed to tick many of the boxes yet!


Last week I took my little girl to Corfe Castle. It's a fabulous ruined castle that stands at the top of a mound, which itself sits in a dip of the Purbeck hills. It's just down the road for us, about 10mins away, so we go there quite often just to walk around the castle perimeter up to the village - it's a pretty little track where you can spot birds and creepy crawlies, and if the stream is full enough you can play pooh sticks on the footbridge! My daughter loves it there, she especially likes peeping the castle through the car window on the road there, and then spotting it though the trees on the walk up.

(pooh sticks)

However, we rarely go into the castle grounds, as it's national trust and we can't afford to pay the entrance too often. Every now and then it's a treat to go into the grounds, where she climbs the hillocks and rolls down them, walks up and down the many stairs, and we eat a picnic out on the lawn. It was even more of a treat last week because we took the bus there by ourselves (another expense I can't afford too often - £5 return for a ten minute drive? seriously?) She sat very nicely on the bus and pointed at things out of the window - when the castle appeared she screamed excitedly: "THERE'S THE CASTLE - THERE IT IS!!!" making everyone on the bus chuckle!

We went in the visitor's centre for a bit, because though it's mostly beyond her at the moment I like her to get used to being in a museum/learning type environment - and they have cool magnetic wall puzzles she can play with!


Unfortunately, by the time we got up to the castle the wind had picked up and the sky had clouded over, and we had another dissapointment - the dragon had gone! My friends had taken my daughter to the castle a couple of weeks before, there had been a dragon built from withy sticks and things, and my daughter kept mentioning 'the dragon at the castle'. So one of the reasons I wanted to take her was so I could see the dragon I'd heard so much about, but he'd been de-constructed (or he'd flown away!).

Because of the cooler weather we did quite a quick walk around, and we didn't stay to eat our sandwiches like I'd planned. We still had fun though, including my daughter saying 'pop,pop,pop' on each step all the way down, because I made the mistake of saying it once at the top (I don't know why?).


We came back to Wareham and ate our sandwiches by the river - feeding our crusts to the ducks afterwards!

So that was our big adventure recently. We've not been out much since, except to the library, because little girl has had a cold. We ventured into Poole today though - luckily my friend Rosie accompanied us as it made the train journey a lot more fun!


Did a bit of shopping and got very tired, was glad to get back home and chill out this evening!

I'll be back tomorrow with some crafty stuff ~ see you then!

x

2 comments:

Meghann Andrew said...

Corfe Castle was one of my favorite places near us, and every time someone came to visit from the U.S. we took them there & had cream teas at the NHS tea shop below. It is a magical place! Love seeing these photos. =) (P.S. That Edwardian screen sounds fab! Don't ever give it away!)

Clair said...

Oooh. Oooh. I loved Corfe Castle. It's so pretty. We sat outside in the tearooms at the bottom and had a very English afternoon tea, complete with drizzle!

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