Back to Somerset

For the moment I feel this blog may become more and activities and travel journal than I place to pontificate. I’d like to think it’s something that we will look back on years to come and remember the cool things that we did and cool places we went. My only concern is putting information on here that might compromise our security, but I’ll just have to be careful – I guess it’s impossible to live off the grid now anyway.



We’ve just come back from spending a few days in the West of England chez senior Stancombes. It’s a most wonderful part of the world and incredibly tranquil and relaxing. And this came about a bit unexpectedly after I had to go the area for a business meeting and we decided to stick around for a long week-end. My parents have now completed a big renovation and extension on the house so we all have masses of room to run around in. Not that we didn’t before, but for Meg it’s like Christmas comes around each time as she can race about to her hearts content, chase the dog and generally run off some of her energy.

Our main aims this trip were to spend time with my parents who we don’t see so often as they live a fair way from us, catch up with friends and go to Bristol Zoo. The latter was a lovely day out and was a bit of nostalgia trip for me as I hadn’t been there in probably 20 years! Can’t really remember much from back then, but I guess I was treading the same ground I had before. (Actually that puts me in a history frame of mood, but that’s for another day.) We’d been to London Zoo during the New Year so it was interesting to compare the two, and Bristol came out OK I reckon.

The zoo is quite compact, but does make for a nice day out without being too big and overwhelming. I’m not sure what it’d be like during the Summer holidays, but on a weekday in February was lovely. The Seals were cool and playful, not sure what some of the birds were, but they looked nice and the love doves were wonderful – especially on the day before Valentines Day! We also discovered that our new(-ish) little camera takes quite good photos which is pleasing.



We spent a nice amount of time with my parents without hopefully overwhelming them, and were really chuffed to spend the day with mum.

I think it’s really important to try and get Meg to spend some time with her grandparents as she doesn’t get too all that often. And whenever she does she talks about them for days afterwards which is so lovely. And it gives her a chance to do fun things like face painting and eating treats which she doesn’t do with us very often.

And being in Shipham we try and get some time for just Theresa and I, usually as a meal out or a cinema trip. They’re real treats for us as we are usually tired after long days or find it tricky to leave Meg with people. But my parents always come up trumps on that front and this was no exception. So on Valentines night we went to a lovely little pub/restaurant/hotel in the village which does good locally grown food, and which is where we had our final meal before getting married several years ago. So a wonderfully romantic night with many good memories too.