It was strange to return to the UK so soon after Christmas, when I’m used to going at the end of May.  However now that 3 of my grandchildren are of school age, I want to be able to help out both of my daughters with child minding and that means it has to be at Easter.  My previous trips in May only covered one week of Whitsun school holidays.  This way I can cover a week each for both families.  But there is a big downside to Easter as it means there are no direct outbound flights.  It also means I had to book the dreaded red-eye flight from Chania to Athens again.  But instead of my journey being over once I arrived at Manchester, I had a further 2 trains to catch over a further 6 hours of travel time, before my daughter Emma picked me up from Thirsk train station.  The first early flight meant no sleep the night before and the ensuing total of 14 travelling hours was exhausting.  So I picked up some awful bug/virus, probably covid and this considerably sapped my usual abundant energy.

Thankfully, I was ok after a couple of good nights’ sleep at Emma’s, with the added help of Nightnurse knocking me out!  So despite my awful travel experience, I was able to enjoy a bike ride with Ralph and Neve and two trips to the military base’s enormous gym with Emma.  Ralph and Neve absolutely love it there and I unexpectedly got to do my usual strength training workouts.  Although I could feel my energy levels were not normal, I was pleased for the opportunity.

Emma secured some free tickets (again from the military base) for Flamingo Land Resort and so we all went there on the Thursday as Emma had the day off work.  It was a beautiful sunny day and best of all it was practically empty of people!  We walked all around the zoo first and before lunch, then left all the rides for the afternoon.  The lack of visitors to Flamingo Land meant there were no endless queues for the rides.  It was almost like having the place to ourselves.  I doubt we will ever experience that again.

 

 

Another day we went for a long walk to a pretty riverbank where Ralph was truly exceptional at skimming stones!  Again the weather was actually lovely and warm and we spent a couple of hours relaxing there.  I had a wonderful week of quality time with Ralph, 10 and Neve, 7 years old and growing up so fast!  The family have much going on this year so they are unable to come to Crete this summer.  I miss them heaps but will have to wait until December before I can spend time with them again.  Until then, regular face-time calls will have to suffice.

On Easter Saturday, Emma and Zoe met half way between Thirsk and Golcar, for me to spend my second week at Zoe and Rich’s.  Later that afternoon, Zoe and Rich went out to celebrate Rich’s birthday whilst I babysat Arthur, 6 and Ava, 2.  We had a great time and they both enjoyed watching me cook their tea, haha!  Bedtime with Ava was a little more challenging now that she is in a little bed instead of a cot.  She kept getting out of bed but eventually stayed put and fell asleep at around 9pm.  Zoe and Rich returned at around 11pm after several hours of much needed freedom!

On Easter Monday it was Rich’s birthday and he wanted to do a big walk on the moors.  We drove and parked at the start of a popular route and I was shocked to see a roadside memorial for the moors murderers’ victim, Keith Bennett, whose remains have never been found.  It is still so tragically sad and it made me really see the bleakness and remoteness of the Yorkshire Moors.

Nevertheless, we all enjoyed the walk, even though it was a lot tougher and longer than we had anticipated.  I think Rich found it challenging with Ava on his back for most of the time, even if he is used to it.  The weather remained sunny and settled all day and parts of the moor did actually look really beautiful.  We walked for about 4 or 5 hours with several uphill climbs and so we were all quite exhausted by the end of it!

The next day Zoe was off work and we took Arthur and Ava to a large park nearby, where we also had a lovely lunch in the huge conservatory café.  There was a small fairground too and the kids enjoyed a couple of the rides.  Luckily for the next 3 days I only had Arthur to look after as Ava was in nursery.  What ever it was I picked up on my long journey here, certainly drained me of all of my energies and add to that my lack of sleep, well… I just didn’t feel my usual self.  However I didn’t let this stop me playing with Arthur and the weather was so lovely on one of the days that we went for a long walk, looking for anything interesting for Arthur to collect with his plastic tweezers and petri dish, haha!  I just love the natural and pure creativity and imagination of children’s minds…

I had a wonderful, if exhausting 2 weeks of fun with all of my grandchildren this Easter.  But it was definitely clouded by my outgoing travel experience.  Next year I will have to look at alternate ways of reaching the UK and Yorkshire, that doesn’t involve so many hours of travel or such early flight times.

My journey home was so much better!  Zoe drove me to Manchester airport for my one flight back to Chania, Crete. Since I’ve been home I’ve enjoyed a girly lunch with friends Lisa, Debbie, Chrissie and my dear friend Solveig and her friend Solvei are here for a week so I am pleased I got to see her too, even if she’s returning in early May.  It was a very warm afternoon at Stella’s in Kalyves.  Yesterday I went early doors to Vangeli’s to catch up with another dear friend, Patrick.  Patrick very kindly took me to Chania airport for that awful early flight.  We shared a pizza and all the news and stuff that happened whilst I was away, like how the Greek Easter was and including (as featured on the BBC) the crazy ‘red storm’ that turned the sky orange and made Crete look like somewhere on Mars instead!  That’s twice I’ve missed these eerie red storms within only a year and I have a feeling there’ll be many more…