Adventure Aborted

On Friday night with a sunny forecast for Saturday I decided that we should do something a bit different. Inspired by Lou at Little Green Shed's woodland adventures I thought it would be good to go and have a breakfast picnic in Richmond Park - I was imagining warm croissants and a big flask of coffee in the bright autumn sunshine, kicking up leaves and possibly a bit of deer spotting (Coco always insists that the deer in Richmond Park are Reindeer and nothing I say can dissuade her).

This is how the morning played out.

7.12am In that moment when I could have turned over and gone back to sleep (or pretended to at least) I didn't, I decided yes, we would do this and I got up. I showered, dressed, found wellies and coats and put them by the door, got Coco and Henry dressed and coaxed Hugh out of bed.

Partly as we'd discovered our flask was broken and partly as we are townies we decided that we'd get coffee on route along with the croissants. Coco and Henry are cereal fans so I put some weetabix in a tupperware and grabbed some milk from the fridge for them.

7.45am We are all in the car - miracles do happen.

7.48am We (ok, I) pull up at Gails bakery, Hugh convinces them to open early for him and goes in and gets the breakfast.

7.58am Back at the car... and it won't start! We are not in a parking place, I get a royal telling off from my husband for having the fans/lights/radio on and for turning the engine off. No battery power left.

The next 15 minutes is spent with Hugh pushing the car and me steering it (badly - I really let the side down for a bit there) in reverse to a proper parking place.

So no Richmond park picnic for us. Instead we went back to Gails, gave the kids their tupperware cereal and then had a full English breakfast each (every cloud...) then I took the kiddos to our everyday playground while Hugh went back and jump started the car.
We were all back home again by 9.30am.

Oh well, there's always next time... 



Warming up with a cups of milk.



Gails bakery, looking all autumnal.



Yum, hot breakfast.
And below some quite stomach turning Halloween treats not quite so yummy looking at 8.30 in the morning.







PS Coco, in her sartorial wisdom, insisted that she go bare legged for the morning. No to tights, no to leggings. I felt cold just looking at her. I was secretly hoping she'd regret her decision and then I was going to get her to write a note to herself to tell her to listen to her mother next time she was warned that she'd get cold... but she tells me she didn't get cold. So maybe she was right after all?