Hiking in Bedfordshire

On Saturday 26th May, our youth organisation at church had arranged a hike in Bedfordshire. I was taking Lucy, Jack, one of Lucy's school friends, Georgia, and a church friend, Bethany. We stopped off near church to pick up Bethany, but then the people carrier wouldn't start again. I called Scott to come and bring the other car out for us, so we could still go, but by the time he arrived, the car had decided to start again - worrying though, seeing as we were driving round Europe in it in 4 days time!

Here are the girls waiting by the roadside for Scott to come.

We eventually made it to the starting point, and everyone else had kindly waited for us. We split into 4 groups taking 4 routes, meeting up at the same point. (I haven't got pictures of Jack because he went in another group with his friends.) We were lucky - it was gorgeous weather, and the countryside was beautiful.

Lucy and Georgia, with her improvised sunhat.

What kind of a hike is that?! Flagging down an icecream van!!

We all met up for lunch at a park in a little village. The park was really good, and had a big spider's web thing, strung between 2 climbing walls - which seemed A LOT HIGHER UP than they looked, once you were up there!

Some of the group hiking back.

We walked along a river at one point, and then ended up stopping at a grassy area the other side of the bridge, when we realised we were going too slowly, and wouldn't be back to meet up with parents in time. Leaders took it in turns to ship the kids back to the starting point again.

We had a lovely time hanging about (I waited with the kids till the end), and inevitably, Lucy and Jack and a few others ended up in the river, soaked from head to toe. (I was dying to join them, but thought it best to at least pretend to be a sensible youth leader.) It was a great day anyway - we all loved it.

The Rest of May (nearly)

Other bits and bobs going on in May:

We had the new service missionaries, the Jepsons, round for dinner one night. Harry had decided to make a welcome sign for them, and stuck it on the front door... 'Welcome to the Cryer's house missionaries. What ever your names are.'  Nice! So welcoming! We had a nice time with them anyway.

I also got round to digging out my raised vegetable bed, and sewing some seeds. On 16th we also had the fencing replaced down the side of our house. It had got damaged in the wind a few weeks ago, and we had bought some new fence panels to fix it ourselves, but realised it was going to be a horrible big hard job, so we paid for a company to do it properly with concrete posts and bottom boards etc. I'm so glad we did - the guy did such a good job, and I admire the new fence every time I go out.

On Friday 18th, Scott and I took a rather unexpected trip to Wales. Scott has always liked the idea of getting a sports car, and for fun has researched them. Anyway, he found a good one, and I said we should just get it, and not keep talking about it forever. He rang the people up, and agreed a price, and so the next day after we dropped the kids off at school, we drove to a supermarket near Cardiff, and met the people and bought the car. It's a Toyota MR2, about 9 years old, but well looked after and with quite low mileage. (I'd never even heard of one before!)
Somewhere on the way...

The car in the picture below is exactly the same as our car (haven't got any photos of ours yet). Scott and I took it in turns driving the two cars home from Wales. It was a bit of a long day - we set off at about 9.30am, and got back about 7.15pm - driving most of that time! We couldn't quite believe we'd done it - for a couple of weeks we kept looking at it on the drive, and laughing!
As soon as we got back, (after taking the boys for a quick spin round the block), Scott took Jack and Tom off to our church's Father and Son's Camp. The next morning Harry had been invited to the cinema with his school friend Joseph Lamin, so Lucy and I had the chance to go out in the new car. (Very excitingly to Tesco...)
The next day (Sunday 20th), Lucy and I went to Kettering Ward Conference in it too.

The following week, I went in to help Tom's class with their 'Viking Day', which was nice (all the kids came to school dressed up), did my visiting teaching, and another day I went in and had school dinners with Tom.
On Friday 25th, we had another church youth choir practise in Northampton. Lucy and I stopped off quickly and took a couple of pictures at the church farms, on our way to picking up the Amos kids.