What a day we've had! Early this morning we headed for Carisbrooke Castle. I was very disappointed to hear moans and groans about visiting a castle whilst on "holiday" - but once I had told Mrs Healy and Mr Fifield off for their pessimism, we entered the grounds with high spirits.
We were very fortunate to receive an interesting talk from Julie all about the cannons used at the castle. The children were fortunate enough to touch the oldest cannon in England! After the talk we headed round the keep to look at the great views. The children enjoyed seeing Jigsaw and Juno the donkeys who help to work the well.
I was absolutely delighted that the children seemed to be really enjoying the castle and learning some great History when suddenly a loud scream echoed throughout the group. It turns out Dianne Buswell (dancer from Strictly Come Dancing) and Joe Sugg (Youtuber, TV presenter and ex-Strictly and I'm a Celebrity Get me out of here) were at the castle. Hopefully you'll see in the photos that Dianne kindly came over to have some photographs. Mr Fifield was absolutely gutted. He'd snuck off to visit the gift shop and missed the action and the chance to get an autograph.
After lunch we headed off to Tapnell Farm. The good news is the children thoroughly enjoyed racing on the go-karts. The bad news is, many of the children desperately need to learn how to safely drive! One child ended up being rammed by a goat and another managed to get the alpacas to come close.
In the evening we headed to the mini golf on Sandown Pier.
1st place - Mrs Healy with a respectable score of 26
2nd place - Mr Fifield with a score of 28
3rd place - Miss Radford with a score 29
4th place - Mr Mills with a score of 31 although bearing in mind the broken toe and he was the only one with a putter with no lines. All of that and the fact he is rubbish at golf. Again, I'd best stop talking in third person.
I can't move on from the description of the golf without mentioning a poor little incident that happened to one of our lovely girls. One girl went to sit down on one of the walls of the golf but fell backwards into the water fountain.
Mr Fifield managed to win a soft toy octopus on the grabber machines. It only cost him a second mortgage!
Without mentioning names (but the child's name rhymes with miss) had the best comment ever this evening. Whilst in the arcade he went up to the change machine and asked whether he could play that game. He said it was good value to put in £1 and get £1 back! Another child (whose name rhymes with Penny) managed to leave with a profit because he cleverly climbed under all the machines to look for lost coins. That boy will go far.
After the arcade fun we headed to the beach for some final fun. We took the outdoor speaker and the children enjoyed dancing on the beach (until the police car came over and we quickly turned the sound down)