The Countdown Begins

This weekend we're off on our first week long adventure in Judith Too and it's fair to say, we are excited! She's been cleaned and tidied and little jobs we felt necessary have been completed. Now all there is to pack is food and clothes. This doesn't sound too much of a problem but Edward is a 100% a boy's boy and generally speaking, one outfit a day isn't enough. For a week away from home we're practically having to take his entire wardrobe because Edward is a mess magnet; I won't complain about it, it's how it should be, but we just haven't the room to cart a washing machine with us and I'm not about to stop him jumping in puddles and rolling around fields; if you can't do it when you're two when can you do it? In addition to my son's clothes quandry, where on earth are we going to store all that dog food?? We need to take the best part of half a sack of food together with parcels of tasty meats and sardines as dear Eric cannot bare to have plain old crunchy kibbles pass his goofy teeth. However, this only seems to be a problem in the morning. He will devour plain crunchy kibbles for tea without a second glance... dear Eric, he is a perculiar creature. So whilst storage isn't necessarily limited, with all of Edward's clobber and his entire wardrobe packed it doesn't really leave us much space for the copious amounts of food those two canines consume. I guess we probably need to start carting a trailer too! Especially as Edward has also decided he'd like to take his ride on tractor!

So where are we going? We're off to the Peak District. Of all the places our first Judith took us, the Peak District holds the most memories and the most happiness for us. We love it. We had a second visit when Edward was a baby and rented a cottage. It happened to be one of the hottest weeks that particular summer and we felt trapped within the cottage or the air conditioned car. The dogs couldn't walk in it; Arthur only enjoys excercising in temperatures of between 10 and 16 degrees with a slight breeze, no rain and definitely not full, hot sun. Our other dog of the time, Thai, didn't particularly feel the need to exercise at all and preferred to bake himself in the sun. This led him to develop a water infection after attempting to slow cook himself in the garden without having drank enough - holiday vet visits are not where the peaceful times are at! With the tempereatures pushing 30 degrees, if we wanted to sight-see it required us to be in the air conditioned car. The cottage we had rented, whilst stating it was dog friendly, actually wasn't all that dog friendly. Upon entering the cottage there was a list of rules for the dogs to follow: not allowed on the furniture, not allowed upstairs, not allowed to toilet in the garden - if these things had been stated in the booking info we most certainly would have looked elsewhere. The garden also happened to be shared and the people in the cottage next door also happened to have a labrador. Fine, really, except the temperature was such that the cottages needed ventilating so ideally it would have been nice to leave the back door open for a through breeze... all well and good if you didn't mind next doors labrador wadering in a chewing your baby's things and I'm fairly certain the neighbouring family also didn't take too kindly to Arthur going in and helping himself to their table top snacks. Not ideal. We left a day early.

As such we can't wait to go back to relive our first Peak District holiday where we first fell in love with the area. We're staying three nights in the Manifold Valley and reattempting the Manifold Trail, probably trying to take the correct route rather than getting lost... We will then be moving north and staying three nights in the Hope Valley. On our first trip we climbed Kinder Scout and stumbled across the most wonderful foxglove lined spring, in a clearing under the shade of some trees. It is my most favourite place on earth. I can't wait to take Edward there although I expect the beauty will be lost on him with him favouring spashing in the water flowing out of the ground. The weather is supposed to be dire but as my Nanny always would have said, 'there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes'. I can't wait to get there. I can't wait to just 'be'.

Watch out Peak District, Judith Too and her Motley Crew are coming.