Five years of fun!

 Family time started with the inevitable goodbyes and Rocky trying to be a stowaway , but as Centre Parks don't let many dogs in and Rocky was going to be well looked after by a good friend he had to be evicted to make room for enough clothing, toys and birthday presents as Gerry could handle.

 The reason for our trek away from HQ was that this young man was an incredible five years old! No idea how that happened but here he is with his birthday badge given by the staff at centre parks. This badge got him loads of unexpected treats such as free drinks at restaurants, cards, sweets and a monster bag of chocolate coins that weighed over a pound! Gerry did well as the family troop transport but close observation of the drivers window will reveal a CD case jammed in it as the motor winder thing went big time bang on the motorway so window has to be wedged in the up position.

 Much fun was had by all at Sherwood Forest and the apprentice got far too many toys, lots of Lego and

 this amazing bike from generous family members. He soon got the hang of it once he realised that you have to look where you are going.

 Big sister was on hand to enjoy the celebrations

 and she recalled that all this was fields at one stage she being the same age

 as rug rat mkII when she was first dragged along to CP by yours truly.

 Of course it being a holiday we stuck rigidly to healthy eating, this is mainly fruit and only a tiny bit of ice cream, double cream, more cream, chocolate cream and alcohol.

 We all went for a play in the park, here we see super grandma, MBAOSPW and lil Bef waiting patiently for the sprogs to get off the swings so they can have a go.

 Proof that grown ups are big kids at heart.

 All kids together on the swing.

 Now I got to have some fun too, right next door to the villa was an enormous forest, Sherwood, where there were some insane mountain bike trails which led to yours truly getting absolutely lost at one stage and finding through judicious use of GPS that he was 7.5 miles from home when in fact he should have been there and at one point weaving through the trees managed this remarkable top speed which wasn't in any way scary. So the 28 days later challenge was finished in style, this month over 220 miles of cycling, mostly in the dark.

All good things must come to an end and we had a great final blow out at Hucks our new favourite restaurant which for a burger bar served a wide and exotic range of vegetarian meals. Have I mentioned that I have gone veggie?