high expectations

Our travels are going very well so far.  We are leaving our third hosts on Monday and again we have learnt an amazing amount about a wide variety of things.

Each place we go to has so much to give and quite often we feel that we are not able to repay the gift of their knowledge, time and inspiration by the work that we are able to do.

Last week I learnt to use a hedge trimmer and a grass strimmer and felled a 25 foot tree, amongst other things.  But the time talking to John was priceless.  We also learnt that Devon isn’t as warm as you might think.   We were in a frost pocket and had three morning frosts!   Neither is Cornwall, as tonight we nearly took the stove out but it is bitterly cold, so this post will be even shorter than planned.

This week V and I built a wood store and water collector.  I am also getting the hang of splitting wood rounds for firewood after several hours practice.

Splitting wood at Kennal Vale Farm

Natasha has a young Forest Garden and has already learnt so much and was making us aware of things which work and don’t work.  Their two children are also Home Ed and now receive some lessons at home.  This works very well for them and is now something I would consider for the girls, having seen the benefits.

Our first week at Lower Shaw Farm was different to anything I could have imagined.  The feeling of belonging to a family was nearly instantaneous and something we will never forget.

Lunch at Lower Shaw Farm

We now move to Tiverton in Devon, to a very low impact farm.  They say “leave all your expectations behind”.  All I expect is something new and again move on with an open mind.

It Begins

Vikki has had a great few days on her Spoon Carving course with Robin Wood.  On the first day she made some very nice tent pegs which did a good job with the strong winds we had.  I was sent out during the night to check things were in place after a couple of pegs were pulled forward and rain was blown in during the first night of strong winds.  The tent held up, despite our worries.  It really is not nice watching the pole and the chimney move around so much and hearing them creaking so loudly!

Her spoons and spatulas are very nice indeed, and she did different styles to those that I have made.

We did need a trip back to Huddersfield to pick up some things we forgot.  That was one of the reasons for starting at the Edale course, so if we forgot things it was a relatively short journey to get them.

I also forced my parents to come and visit on my dad’s birthday.  They had a terrible trip down, but had good fun with their grandchildren J

Our holiday finishes tomorrow though.  A visit to a play park and then Bletchley Park before going to our first WWOOF host, Lower Shaw farm.

Vikki and I are really looking forward to it now.  It has been so long in the planning and now it starts.  To quote my sister “Cool”!

A van full of stuff

It has been a very busy weekend which Vikki has detailed on her blog http://www.abusymum.blogspot.com/.  For my part we have nearly squeezed everything in the van.

This afternoon I quickly calculated that we have 8 cubic metres of "stuff".  Probably a bit less than that, but close!

Tomorrow we squeeze a few more things in and then we set off :)

Big Blue Adventure Van

We now have a working split charge system in the van. Whilst measuring spaces to put a new leisure battery I found an old one! Totally dry, but all the wiring was there. Tony looked at it and found a blown 150A-32V fuse between the relay and leisure battery.  That would take a massive amount of energy to blow, it would be interesting knowing what would do it.  This may have been the cause for our starter battery losing so much charge that it could not start on cold mornings as the Battery-Guard system is now working properly and the van starts first time.

We also have new tyres now, arranged though http://www.tyrefitdirect.co.uk/. Big all-terrain tyres to help stop us getting stuck.  K really enjoyed taking photos and video of Ian fitting the tyres.

We will lose some comfort and gain some road noise but Tony is fitting some speakers in the middle for the kids so they can still complain about grown-up radio :)

V has thought of some more changes to the back of the van.  Lucky me!

We have also learnt about keeping spare Pyjamas and bedding close to hand as K was sick in the night and I had to go out to the garage and retrieve a drawer full of spares.  Oops!

It also seems that kiln dried hardwood logs will suck up quite a bit of moisture if left in a cool damp place for a month or two.  Having said that, our wood stove can heat the tent up pretty damn quickly with good wood!

Speaking of which, I should go and split some wood that we never got around to carving and buy some more so we can get the tent warmed through again so we can try camping tonight, or tomorrow.

Living with the In-Laws

Living with the in-laws

So far, so good. We all seem to be getting on well. Even though grandma thinks K should be in school she is being really helpful, even taking part in the home education, or education otherwise, as she has taken her to the Leeds Art Gallery and is hoping to take her to Manchester to see the Tutankhamen exhibit.

K didn't really think much of the paintings but enjoyed the sculptures. I foresee many trips to art galleries and museums in the next six months!

Having put the tent up, but still sleeping in the house, we can try and get layout right. We have slightly adjusted the chimney and have decided to shorten the guy ropes. After much debate about building a camp kitchen a trip to Ikea revealed some lightweight office drawers that do nearly everything we want and need only slight modification.

Ikea may be a huge multi-national, but they do some things right ;)

As this post has taken almost a week to write the grandparents have flown to Egypt now.  I think the girls will really miss them as they have had so much fun.  Hopefully we will be busy and having fun with the people we meet and the time will fly by for the girls.

The Beginning

The big adventure has begun.

We have a tenant in the house that we own and have moved out of the house that we were renting.

V's parents looked after the children whilst we filled the van three times and cleaned the house. I posted the keys through the letting agents door at 20.30. A lot later than I had thought!  Even having moved almost everything into storage there was so much to pack on the last day.  The children had both had a snotty cold and cough for the last week, but I should have been able to do more.

Having said that, I did get Tony to service the van and asked him to do the split charger and put speakers in for the back seats.  I have also made my mind up about the all terain tyres we are having on the van. We definitely will need a small trailer as well. We don't travel light. And why should we? This is supposed to be enjoyable, not a test. I decided that this afternoon!

There is still an awful lot of things to sort out.

Once the tent is up we can start work on getting the layout and the tent kitchen made. It's OK, three weeks is lots of time!!

Smug home educators?

I have had a few minutes being trapped on the computer looking at other peoples blogs.

There are many reasons for home educating our children, most home educators don't have a single reason, though often it seems it may initially appear so.

I found this blog smug home educating bastard from The Smiths list.  It caught my wife's eye so I had to read it!  The text down the right covers a lot of my reasons for avoiding regular schooling.  But not all!
The blog being kept up to date is well worth a read.  Thank you Kay, for doing the hard work of finding excellent blogs to inspire :)