Happy New Year all!  We haven’t managed to get to any new tea rooms yet this year so I thought I’d write a recommendation for the above instead.  We had a lovely get together with all the children just before Christmas at Danbury Country Park where we often go for picnics in the summer, once memorably involving one of our little poppets who was potty training at the time pooping themselves and then somehow managing to stand in it.  After we’d all stopped laughing/gagging, the poor little mite was of course cleaned up, as was the surrounding area where he’d managed to spread it (wiping poo off grass with baby wipes is surprisingly difficult).  Needless to say, the location of the picnic was hastily moved ….. Anyway, back to the more recent past.

We wanted to do something where they could be free and blow off some steam as, my, were they hyper on the build up to the school holidays!  I think we all felt a little stressed with the pre-Christmas hype and so we decided that the Big Bird Feed would be perfect – outdoors, not a Grotto or candy cane in sight – just running around the Country Park like maniacs with a bag of wild bird seed, tipping it into hundreds of socks and stockings that had been strung from trees in order to provide all the birds with plenty of food over winter.  Fun with a good deed at the heart of it – the perfect Christmas activity.

Sister Y and I failed miserably in the fairly obvious task of dressing the children in suitable attire – i.e. wellies.  Sister X on the other hand, who had also brought Husband X along for some pre-Christmas mayhem, looked like she’d come from a Horse & Hound magazine photo shoot.  They all looked extremely stylish – fully kitted out in wellies and waterproofs, backpacks and walking poles (okay, they didn’t really have walking poles).  I’m just jealous ….. sigh!

It’s so lovely when they all get together, they really enjoy each other’s company.  They all go to different schools and only see each other in the holidays or the odd special occasion and it’s heart warming to see them ‘click’ back in where they left off the last time they were together.   They duly ran around the trail like maniacs, totally overexcited at the prospect of being allowed to carry their own pots of bird food, and proceeded to tip it all over themselves, the ground – I should think the official receptacles probably got about 30% of what they started out with!

We knew it was time to head back to the fire pit for hot chocolate and marshmallows when a few of them decided it was more fun to empty the stockings back into their own pots … !!

The Country Park employees had their hands full making hot chocolate for an amazing amount of people – it was so well attended.  The children then found twigs to stick their marshmallows on and toasted them in the fire pit, managing to eat them without injury to themselves or anyone else which was quite a feat with so many people around to potentially stab/scald.

I’m not sure whether this is a once a year event but there is always something going on – they do “Wild Wednesdays” – all the info can be found at http://www.visitparks.co.uk.  This was a free event, you brought along your own bird seed and your own mugs and marshmallows – they provided the hot chocolate.  Parking charges apply for the car park.

We hope to be back eating cakes – purely for research purposes – very soon …. x