July in Photos

I cannot believe July is over, that was a super fast 31 days full to the brim of adventures and time outside.  I usually join Hawthorn Spellweaver for these posts, but not this month.  She kindly took the trouble to email me the prompts for July, as I was away the first two weeks of the month, but I am rubbish at checking the email address for this blog so I didn't pick up the email until the end of last week.  Sadly I hadn't taken any pictures that matched the prompts for July so I will give you a selection of my own choosing.

We started the month by travelling south for a family holiday.  We had dry warm weather, which makes camping so much easier, we picked the location for a few reasons but one is that the south of England generally has warmer weather over the summer than where I live.  In the weeks leading up to our holiday it was much drier and warmer where we live, I was worried we were in for a cold, wet week!

We enjoyed hours of cycling on fantastic off road tracks through beautiful countryside.

The area is famous for its wild ponies and cattle.  Some of the properties have commoners rights attached to them which allows the owners to graze their livestock on local land*.  They often came wandering though our campsite.

When it comes to food on holiday I have, in the past, done a lot of cooking prior to going away, reheating it when we were to eat it.  It always meant a huge amount of work in the week leading up to going away which often meant that I was exhausted by the time we actually went away.  I tried a different approach this time taking a box of basic ingredients and buying fresh ones locally.  There was a fantastic farm shop a two minute drive from the campsite which supplied most of our needs.

We don't usually take a planned 'holiday' from home education mostly because we don't differentiate between family life and learning.  July ended up being a month when we only had one week of our usual rhythm, and on one day of that week we had great fun at a friends house making huge bubbles.  It was a really easy activity to set up and provided plenty of entertainment.  The bubbles were amazing to watch as they wobbled through the air, seemingly fragile, but covering considerable distances on occasions.

Last weekend we travelled to visit friends and their local air show, I had never been to one before and had no idea what to expect.  It was incredibly busy, especially to us small village dwellers, but we managed to find a quietish spot looking out to sea with the crowds behind us.  There were so many different displays going on, WWII planes, parachute displays, a beach assault, gyrocopter and helicopter displays.  The highlight for me was definitely the Red Arrows we saw them twice and they were fantastic on both occasions.

My diary for August is looking very empty, I have plans for a few of the days but nothing else at the moment.  I know that we will slowly fill it, but I am looking forward to a very slow, gentle month.

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* all land in England is owned, the right to graze your livestock on land owned by others is a very old one in some cases it has been around since the time of William the Conqueror (nearly 1,000 years)