Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Have Baby, Will Travel



Having successfully dodged rail strikes, airline strikes, heavy snow and a very stroppy volcano we are now returned from our first proper family holiday with no drama what so ever! 

                                  
                    Evelyn plays bite Daddy's nose in the cottage

We spent a lovely week on the Island of Seil just off the West coast of Scotland near Oban. We had a couple of ulterior motives for this location, a wedding in Glasgow and visiting Evelyn's Auntie Helen and Uncle Bryn who have recently moved to Oban (and who's flat provided a handy mainland pit-stop for nappy changes and feeds). They also put us in touch with a family on a neighbouring island who very kindly lent us their off-road buggy and baby backpack and pointed us in the direction of some lovely walks. The Mum of the family actually writes a guide to buggy walks so I shall now blatantly plug her website: www.pushchairwalks.co.uk Actually while I'm at it this is where we stayed: http://www.isleofseil.co.uk/ our little house was ideal, coming complete with high chair, cot, lots of birds to stare at and (and this is the most important bit) fruit cake.

     Evelyn goes off road

In addition to the walking, general pottering and massive consumption of honeycomb ice cream, we also slotted in a visit to a sealife centre where Evelyn got her first sight of otters ( squeal! bounce!), seals (suck suck, oooo Seagull) and a giant octopus (snooooze) It was a shame she slept through the giant octopus as she missed it grabbing it's poor keeper and trying to drag him into the tank. 

After a lovely week on Seil we headed to Glasgow where we met up with Granny Angela and Grandad. Evelyn behaved herself pretty well at the wedding, my choice of a halterneck dress was however, with hindsight and breastfeeding in mind - not the cleverest! Oh well, a good time was had by all and attending a wedding with some handy grandparents was great as it meant Fred and I actually managed to get in a bit of dancing. That said our efforts were rather poor. We are enthusiastic but very amateur ceilidh dancers and were entirely put to shame by the folks in kilts! We used the excuse of a very tired baby to head for our hotel at 9.30pm, in truth I think all three of us were beaten at that point!

                         Some quality parenting in the Glasgow hotel

So that was that and it was time to head home. We travelled to/from Glasgow by train. First class - get us! I think I can leave it to you to imagine the look on our fellow passengers faces when we boarded the non-cattle carriage with backpacks and a baby, but Evelyn behaved herself very well, apart from being terrified of the changing table in the disabled loo.

                        Evelyn has fun in first class

Actually the only traumatic bit of the travelling was the London bus from the station to our flat, but I think I could do a whole post ranting about buses at the moment so I think I'll leave it there.

Kxxx

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