Thursday photo #329

Isn’t it strange to think that by next week, children will be back in school for the first time since March? As much as lockdown dragged, the summer holidays have flown by. We’ve left it late as usual in terms of buying school uniform, so that’s our plan for today. For the first time in months, I have quite a bit of work hanging over me. Having taken on various different freelance contracts over the past few months, they are all starting to pick up the pace as businesses start to reopen. We’re all ready to start getting back into a routine next week and picking up where we left off in March.

Camping

Since buying the van two and a half years ago, lockdown was the first time we haven’t used it regularly. We normally have weekends away throughout the year, even when the temperatures are ridiculously cold. So, getting away last week was a relief. We headed up to Dunbar in Scotland and stayed on a campsite near the beach.

For the first time ever, I managed to run while we were on holiday. I always drag my trainers along but never actually manage to use them. This time, I continued to run every day. It was a revelation. By getting out running from the campsite, I discovered things we never would have known about otherwise. A stunning coastal path into town, an adventure playground, a wood and stunning views across the salt marsh.

On our last full day in Scotland, we decided to walk the coastal path into Dunbar. My husband took Libby to look around a ruined fort, while Lia and I went rock pooling on a little stony cove. Afterwards, we debated whether to walk back the quick way along the road or follow the coast path. Choosing the coast path was an incredibly fortuitous decision because before we’d gone two far, we saw three dolphins swimming just off the coast. It was a beautiful sight and a lovely way to end the holiday.

Days out

Unusually for us, we haven’t had many family days out since lockdown started to lift. We still haven’t eaten inside either. Yesterday though, we headed to the SS Great Britain. We were offered complimentary tickets and it was a great opportunity to see how different things were with social distancing measures in place.

Girl wearing a mask in front of horse statue

I was pleasantly surprised that the social distancing measures didn’t detract from the day out at all. In fact, it was lovely that having to pre-book a time slot meant that there were less people there. We were able to take our time looking around the ship and the museum. Many interactive attractions were still working with hand sanitiser readily available everywhere. This has given me some confidence to visit more attractions in the coming months. Perhaps it is a little late to realise this with summer holidays coming to an end but it does feel like things are returning to normal just a little bit.

I love this photo of the girls, they are such drama queens. They were acting out the unfairness of the class divide on the SS Great Britain.