The other confession I hold to this is, is that I certainly have been way more excited about finding these rainbow stones than my girls; it is not that they haven't enjoyed the hunt, it is just that I really do love these kind of things. Map reading has been a great love of mine from a young age, whenever we would go out walking in the hills it would be me to have the map, or even in car journeys, and imagine my joy when I learned physics and could use distance, speed, time to calculate each other. The simple joys of life! Therefore my poor children have been subjected to quite a few map reading exercises over the years, in part as motivators for walks. Now with homeschooling I have taken the chance to familiarise the girls with maps and the island they live on. Not one for knowing the names of everything, it may be a dyslexic thing but retaining names have always been difficult for me, however more and more I wish to learn about the ground we are walking on and the simple act of knowing names can show respect. Learning together the girls and I have drawn up maps of the island and challenged ourselves to match up names, then whilst out walking talk more of where we are etc. So of course the rainbow rock hunt I saw all the potential there; we drew up a map roughly marking on where the found ones would be placed and then looking at an OS map to which key points there may be others hidden.
Having been out walking with Rory I of course discovered a great many without the girls so we could at least go for a 'hunt' knowing that one was going to be found. Does anyone else enjoy, for the most part, walks with your kids? Yes, getting them out the door and enthusiast about the idea just doesn't seem to become any easier, however once we are out it is lovely. The girls run free, their imagination sets alight and the planned walk never goes to plan. Take this Sunday for example; there were two stones the girls had yet to see that I had seen giving a good reason to head out for a full family walk. Actually I should probably state that on Sunday I woke up on the wrong side of bed and felt drained of ideas for the day. So whilst I watched a promised programme with the girls Will took it upon him to pack up a picnic and get us out for the day, wise idea. With a map around her neck I refused to tell Jessica where the stones were only that she was to first of all get us to Burnt Hill. Burnt Hill is a peninsula off the back of the island and the rainbow was hidden in one of the coves beside. Jessica found us the way, we found the stone, but we hadn't actually gone up Burnt Hill and so up it we had to go as that was what Amelia thought we were doing. It was quite windy and so on the far side we dropped down into an outcrop of boulders and found a sheltered spot for lunch. Something about sitting on heather, hiding from the wind, eating tomato soup from a flask made it all feel like a proper adventure and I felt me mood lift. That is even with a dog climbing over everyone as we tried to eat.
The idea was to head onward to the last stone relatively nearby, however after lunch we found ourselves on the opposite cove, Bull's Porth, that hugs Burnt Hill. A very rocky cove with no beach but when you are constantly surrounded by beautiful beaches (sorry!) it was lovely to be on some different terrain, clambering over rocks, exploring. there is just so much to see and the girls have my same love for scrabbling. I find it wonderful to watch them navigate themselves over the undulating terrain, sometimes slipping, working out their balance and how far they can push themselves, not dissimilar to life, with myself or Will not to far a distance just incase something does go wrong. I found a pot buoy, always a good find, a lovely, vibrant turquoise one too and Rory found a bone which caused an argument over which type, I still vote for a dolphins fin.
We didn't make it over to the other rock but headed around back along a boring, beautiful beach and up home for roast chicken and watching a film in the old school style tent we had erected in the garden. So yes after not such a great start upon my part it turned into a pretty perfect family day x