pheasants, frogs and banana bread: Day 3. Gran arrives.

Gran arrived to help out for a couple of days and with her brought some sophistication by means of camping chairs, long-life milk and the pram.

There is always work to be done. It felt so great to have some clean clothes hung out.

The kids wanted to show Gran 'our' beach, so that's exactly what we did.
Some more natural art. I just loved the black, pink and green on the white background.

Gran also brought with her a hammer and some safety goggles for finding fossils in the rock.

After lunch on the beach we decided to go into Whitby as Champ wanted to find the fossil shop and we wanted to ask about Jet. Jet apparently is fossilised wood that gets washed up on the beach, it is very black (obviously), hard and very light. The locals make it into jewelry.

The kids thought the statue looked funny with it's seagull hat.

Whitby has all these wonderful higgledly piggeldy streets and houses. Apparently the smugglers used to run through the narrow passageways amongst the houses.

We found the fossil shop!
Heading back to the car after a lovely afternoon meandering round the streets of Whitby, we stopped to watch the bridge swing open for the boats,
and walked past the moored boats in the bay.
and back home for a fish and chip supper.

Some VERY tired children...
It's funny how, only now, am I really starting to appreciate nature and it's wonderful creativity.

Look at this cloud we saw as we sat round the fire...

and this stick that was about to be plonked on the fire.
Later that evening, Champ put out the fossils that he had found.

Here is just one of the 3 towels that he covered.

Whilst looking for sticks to feed the fire, the kids found an old bicycle stuffed in a bush. They got it out and spent the evening zooming down the field. It was so cute, they were trying to convince me that the bike would be perfect for me and that we should take it home on the roof rack :o)

While the older two rode around, the younger two slept.