It has turned so cold. Like the calender flicked to september and someone just turned off the summer. I was hoping, praying for a bit of Indian summer lovely. Where the return of school  was heralded with many more warm afternoons after school in the garden with ice-pops.

But no. It disappeared. Leaving us with a bewilderingly low temperatures and fingers hovering near the over-ride button the central heating. Its like we had our fair share of sun over the summer months and there is no more chances at a top up.

I know people do love the autumn, the falling leaves, crisp mornings and long walks wrapped up in gloves and scarfs. I can even relate a little to that but i think since these past nearly 11 years of having children any love affair i had with autumn has sort of fallen to the way side.

A few of those reasons could be:

• refusing to wear coats, gloves, scarfs, long sleeve tops, shoes, wellies…
• determined to wear summer dresses, flip flops. sparkly thin strapped nonsense that parade themselves as shoes, the most thin cardigan in the world and declare ‘i have a jumper on!’ on the coldest day of the year so far!
• Running and sliding on leaves which are wet..and slippy..and falling inevitably. One of those situations where the joy you gain in ‘being right’ is quickly eclipsed by the realisation that its you that has to take them to the 2 hours wait in the drop in centre for a twisted knee.
• the rain. the rain. the rain.
• Colds..and im not talking temperatures…germ filled children everywhere you turn. It turns september and you can go out and every other child has those shiny, green trails down their noses.  *shudder*
• Cold feet!
• Lost gloves, hats, scarfs……insert any winter type garment that you lovingly buy that then gets discarded within 60 seconds.

Things are just harder in cold weather, every outing involves intense negotiation, battle grounds and a small trailer of extra wear.

I think there was a time when, i too, used to love autumn. A great excuse to cuddle up on the sofa with a huge cuppa and watch a movie from under a duvet. Now….cuddling up on the sofa means a full scale war over who has the fluffyest bit of the blanket, a foot to the groin and biscuit crumbs descending silently to the forgotten wasteland that is ‘down the sofa’

Not to mention the fight over what to actually watch on the TV…which can take years and a full UN peace treaty to resolve!

So a reluctant hello to autumn. I will agree you are pretty with your colours and your moods. You get rid of the evil that is a wasp. There was once a time when you and i were friends..but then my world became inhabited with small opinionated, clothing averse people…and..

well…

just so that we are straight..

I’d like summer back.

Me, the kids and my sanity miss it.

😉

before we set off to France we really did wonder about whether or not it was sensible to take the bikes.

Bike riding is a large part of our family. Our kids often cycle to school. My OH cycles to work, and has to be said is a bit of a bicycle geek, since I have got a bike we have done far more family cycles with the smaller girls in the little carrier seats and it is something that we really enjoy.

The OH was keen to take them but I was scared that the car might not even leave the driveway! But we decided to take 4 bikes and hire one kids bike when we got there.

To be honest we had no way of attaching another thing to the car!

At the campsite, initially, the kids used theirs a lot. Perfect for hopping on to go to the pool or to their groups in the mornings. I felt pretty confident with all of them being on their own in the campsite. They are all really confident cyclists and we have taken them on supervised rides on the roads so they know to pay attention to cars etc.

We decided to attempt a longer bike ride from a beach cycling back along a coastal path to the little village. It was a perfect day, warm but with a breeze and so we set off with the promise of an ice cream in the village once we made it there. After a short while we discovered a few things about the french:

1. They LOVE to cycle on their coastal paths in their masses.

2. They get REALLY unhappy if you ‘ride’ the wrong side of the street. 😉

3. They are very SERIOUS about cycling. It seemed every so often we seem to have blundered with our 3 erratic left side/right side child cyclists into a sudden whirl of pelaton like, lycra clad cyclists. With their heads down they seem to barely raise an eye brow of acknowledgment as we shouted alerts at the children and prayed hard that they wouldn’t just ‘stop’ slap bang in the middle of the path and cause a mini pile up!

There were little spurs running off the main path and like a travellers on a train we lost and gained fellow cyclists at different points as they went about their summer business. But things spaced out and we cycled along the side of the sea, through the delightful, sandy, tree lined paths that are so characteristic of this area of France. It seemed a lot longer than we had thought and the euphoria of making our destination is matched by the sadness of realisation of the return ride. But there was minimal moaning but maximum sore bumitis. But it was a good trade off for a really lovely way of spending an afternoon.

The area we had parked in was one of those headland beaches were the wind was really strong. Perfect for kite flying and before we headed back to our camp we sat and watched some of the stunt kites. They are so incredible. Our kids were inspired and grabbed out national trust kite and set off onto the sand dune. The gusts of wind took the kite soaring and it was all they could do to hold onto it tight enough so as it didn’t blow away. The girls all had a go, but my son stayed out there for a LONG time trying to copy some of the stunt kites and work out how to do some moves with his kite.

The beach looked amazing in the later afternoon sun. We did this ride towards the end of our holiday and the kid’s skin had taken on that lovely golden ‘caramel’ colour from their days enjoying the sun.

They looked healthy, happy and very dirty…and content.

The little girls were playing in the sand whilst the older ones flew the kite and a french couple came over to me and started speaking to me.

I was slightly panicked ( my french is really poor) till i worked out little bits of what they were saying and made up the missing bits to make a sentence!!

They had been watching my littlest girl as she twirled and jumped into the sand dunes and they were saying:

Cette petite fille, est-elle votre fille? Elle est tellement belle. Tellement joli….

I sort of worked out they were saying that she was very pretty and i replied with my thanks… hearing i was English they then wished me a.. bonnes vacances   This was summer living, outside, healthy and enjoying the incredible things that nature has for us. A good day. It was a bonne vacances