A small walk and a visit to the Post Office

A relaxed morning--I went for a run, and Galen and Will played their new "Romans" game, where they line up the little Roman soldier figures, and flip coins to determine who wins each little combat. (This is their version of the table-top wargames they saw in York.)

Aprille had friends over to practise music in the morning: Annie, Jim and Jackie. We sat and listened to the ensemble for a while, but then we headed off to Buxton on a final English shopping errand: to buy that one more Airfix model. Galen spotted it six weeks earlier, in a tobacconists in Buxton, and it was still there. We packaged it in a ziploc, added it to our other envelopes, and drove to Longnor to mail it. While I was in the Post Office, Kate, Galen and Will discovered a previously undetected fish & chips place, right in the village of Longnor. They also bought the long-awaited Lemon Curd for Galen at a little shop. We got back to Boosley Grange just in time to hear Annie, Aprille and Jackie play a couple ukulele tunes.

After lunch Kate and the boys enjoyed some more Wimbledon, and then we set off for a short walk at the Mermaid Inn. That's a pub set in a spectacular site on a ridge on a moor, near Aprille's. Unfortunately they were not serving food in the middle of the afternoon, foiling Kate's plan for a final order of chips. Our walk, with Mollie, was fun, but extremely hot: there are no trees up there on the moorland! But Kate said that this was actually the best sheep experience of the trip. For some reason the sheep we ran into on this walk were interested in us. They approached us. They wanted to know who we were. Kate took lots of pictures. At the end we checked out the mermaid pool, a tarn near the Inn.

Back at Boosley Grange, Aprille and I baked a loaf of bread and she made a wonderful salad of watermelon, olives and feta cheese, which we ate with the bread. (We are stealing all her recipes.) The boys feasted on chips and things, which Will & I duly retrieved from Longnor: a final grease-feast. Crisps flavour of the day: Japanese Teriyaki Chicken. The boys give it a thumbs down, but not too bad.

After the boys went to bed, Kate and I did the final clean & pack.