Nicole says she is on a Summer Park Crawl.  Kind of like a bar crawl, but parks.  You get it.  Anyway she suggested Ladywell Fields which is really close to where we live.  We took the bus though because we are lazy sometimes.  Sometimes we are not lazy but I’ll get to that later.  

The park has several playgrounds- parks are seriously so spacious here, have I mentioned that?  We skipped the first one because there was no shade and stopped at the second playground to eat our lunch.  There was a zip line, swings, and various other playgroundish things.   The zip line was the obvious favorite.  I had a fun watching my  kids zip their hearts out, but I also have fun watching little British kids “queue up” for these sorts of things.  They get the concept of the queue but still love to shove and cut, and then there is always the diplomatic child who tries to keep things in order.  

When I don’t have Richard around to make jokes about me becoming Japanese I tend to take way too many pictures.  

After we ate and the kids had their fill of this playground we walked through more park, crossed an overpass over the National Rail tracks, and into another section of the park with yet another playground.  This kind of playground is called an Adventure Playground, or what we Americans might call a lawsuit waiting to happen.  There was a man there (parks and rec type employee) who asked me to sign a waiver but it was loosely enforced and I saw many kids come  in and out of their own accord. 

The kids had adventures indeed!

The rope swing was another thrill for my little monkeys, even Eli liked it so long as he didn’t swing too high or too fast. 

Then of course- the sand.  Water-less beaches everywhere folks.  I do have to admit though, after watching the kids play here for a long time, it’s much less stressful without water.  I don’t have to be constantly vigilant about who is in the water, and are they drowning?  In fact, I wished I had a book with me this was so easy. 

Once we were exhausted we decided we would head out.  I was thinking we could exit the park on the opposite end that we came in from and walk home.  I wasn’t too worried about finding my way because I have a good data package on my phone now and I can use my maps wherever I go.   (You thought I was going to say that I wasn’t worried because I have a good sense of direction, didn’t you? Well I don’t.)

So when we stumbled across ANOTHER playground it was pure accident.  But I let the kids get their fill of this one too, while I tried to figure out what on earth the people were doing on the other side of the pathway.  

What WERE they doing? Picking wild blackberries! So we did that too.  Until our poor wrists and hands were all scratched up and none of us could imagine eating another blackberry ever again. (Until dinner at least because I used the FRUITS [see what I did there?] of our labors in a salad.) 

We finally exited the park, four hours after arriving at the park.  I had no idea where we were and my phone was being practically worthless so we just walked and walked and walked until Cameron spotted a bus stop, but I’m too proud so we kept walking and walking and walking until I spotted a bus stop.  Then we took the bus home, or at least to the bus stop by our house that is also by Percy Ingle where we all got delicious doughnuts and pastries because I’m sure we burned, like, 298,341 calories.  

And that was our Monday.  The end.