Day Trippers

We’ve had a great Diamond Jubilee weekend in Cumbria with our good friends; we ate too much, drank too much and laughed just the right amount.    

After a chilled out day and evening on Saturday, we wanted to get the kids out to see the sights and get some fresh air, so on Sunday we decided to take them on a miniature train ride.  The plan was that the kids would be so excited by their novel mode of transport that the adults could sit back, relax and admire the beautiful countryside.  We were then going to have a delicious lunch when we reached our destination and leisurely make our way back.

We boarded the train, the kids beside themselves with excitement and the adults exchanging those secret smiles when they know they’re giving their children a lovely treat and feel all warm and gooey inside because of it.  The steam started to pour out of the funnel, the whistle blew and they all squealed with anticipation as the train slowly chugged out of the station…

…Five minutes later, the novelty of the mode of transport has well and truly worn off for everyone.  The train was going at a snail’s pace, Zach was trying to open the door and launch himself out of a moving locomotive for the seventeenth time and the adults’ patience was wearing thin from listening to a constant chorus of, ‘Are we nearly there, yet?’ 

As the wind howled through the carriages and everyone huddled together for warmth, cold, miserable people from one side of the track waved at cold, miserable people on the other side.  We tried to jolly the children along by getting them to look at the animals in the fields along the way, but let’s face it, once you’ve seen one cow, you’ve seen them all.

We reached our destination and hurried to the pub, spurred on by the idea of hot, home-cooked fare and a couple of beverages…to discover that they’d run out of food.  Treat.  Tired and defeated, we ordered the great children silencer that is the trusty bag of crisps, and we drowned our sorrows in alcohol.

After all of oh, half an hour, we traipsed back to the miniature train, reluctantly squeezed ourselves back on and steeled ourselves for the return journey, this time pointing out sheep on the way instead to shake things up a little bit.

As we arrived back, having missed a display by the Red Arrows, with blue lips, snot frozen to our faces and spines like Quasimodo from hunching over in the tiny carriages, we asked the children what they had thought of the afternoon, expecting them to be polite at best or say that they had been bored senseless at worst.

‘It was brilliant!’, they said, and proceeded to happily munch their way through their McDonald’s Happy Meals.  Weird breed, kids, aren’t they? 🙂