Adventurising, the art of having family adventures.....

The art of family adventurising - summer 2011! I'll be going through my gazillion photo's of our peedie 1845 mile round trip full of adventures and putting a few indiviual adventures up over the next few days, but for now, I've had a flick at the photos and here's an overview of our adventurising this holiday! We're lucky, we all still have adventures as a family, with the younglings at nearly 15 and nearly 17, I know how lucky I am that we still have these types of holidays, I hope they do continue!

Adventures involve alot of fresh air in our lives, alot of fun and alot of food. On adventures it pays to know which is the best ice-cream shop in the region you are in. In Brora, we stopped for ice-cream at Capaldi's, in Dundee it's got to be Visochi's. However, in Fife, the best ice-cream shop is Jannetta's, you will hear no other one mentioned in that town, that shop is the best, 52 flavours as well!!!

 Not purple wellie weather at the moment, its balmy 20+ degrees tonight in St Andrews, so the cellist kindly lent us the converse, for the obiligatory, we're off on an adventure shot! Thank you cellist! And the creels are by the harbour and east sands bay where in Grandpa use ot keep his boat in St Andrews, he fished for lobsters, so we like creels! And, when on adventures we like to visit this part of the world to say hello to him. However, given the weather, the trusty favourite jumper had to come off!

Peedie of course comes on adventures, not be the same without him, and today he's wondering where we are off to.........another beach, excellent!

 A bit of sand, sea and a bit of paddling, with the silly green toes. Green fingers are for gardening, green toes are obiligatory for paddling!

Ok, if you insist I'll go in too, time for a proper paddle!

When adventurising in each location we visit we try and seek out the old familiar things we like to do, I love St Andrews as I came here frequently when back in Scotland (my father was in the army so we moved around alot). When we returned to Scotland, St Andrews was my grandparents favourite place, and they often had one or two of us grandchildren with them. I take my family here now and we love it! However, my Mr Flowers, use to go to Elie alot with his parents, so its a new place I've discovered too. Brilliant!

In Elie we tend to walk on the beach but this time we found a brilliant new adventure to add to the collection - the Elie Chain Walk ........

Looks a bit scary huh and yes the sea is lapping below, one wrong footing and a splash, how exciting!? We'd read the review above (see Elie chain walk link) and decided to go for it, a free adventure too - and it was amazing!! Tinned Tomatoes has a blog on it too - here you go for that link. We all throughly enjoyed it and have put it on our 'must do when in the area' list. I'd highly recommend it. I'll blog about it as a whole adventure of its own, but todays natter is about having lots of adventures, so I'll keep to my mixture for now! 

Looks a bit challenging doesn't it and more than a bit fun! We all did the walk both ways - when we got to one end we returned the other way - what an excellent day that was. Started with a beach walk, chain walk in the middle, ended with a beach walk and a picnic.

  Aside the dog putting sand in the raspberries from the farm shop we found on the way to the adventure, not a bad afternoon! Elie is a beautiful village in the East Neuk of Fife. And then it was time to head to the deep south, well to the North Lincoshire estuary to have a few England adventures....garden centres, warhammar worlds, picnics, food, grub, walks and catching up with a few pals including Daffy, who has the most beautiful pictures of a bit of our adventure on her blog too!

For the folk like me who don't drive on motorways very often, that was a bit of an adventure too, whilst I don't mind a bit of that kind of driving to keep my hand in, I'm not very keen on this as an everyday experience, although I'm secretly proud that I managed to drive all the way from Orkney to Nottingham (getting lost alot and finding my old high school in Nottingham was an added bonus, when lost!!!) And so, after all good adventures were long gone and time to go back home, the long trek home, up the motorway.

A brief stop at Edinburgh airport to drop the young folk to their plane for a summer in France with their father, where by all accounts for the next 6 weeks they'll have many adventures of thier own with their other family. I'll miss them, but I'm sure they'll have such fun, there are great ups and downs to having a split up family, so we take that bit on the chin. It's only kind to make it as easy for the kids as possible! However, early departures to airports and long drives to ferries, whilst a part of the adventurising, are not alot of fun!

Although, with a car packed full of homeward bound goodies and plants, blankets cushions, picnics and puppies - there's always a sense of adventure with any kind of trip isn't there?

Living on an island, ferry journeys dominate the beginning and end of your adventurising.  It's fun going home on a boat, plenty to do and see, folk to catch up with, I managed to meet over 10 folk I knew on the boat and had a peedie (small) blether (chat) with most of them. How lovely an adventure that was too!

 And, so to home. To be greeted by chickens, gorgeous red ripe tomatoes from the indoor allottment - how utterly fabulous that was (thank you J for looking after everything so well!!!

And, whilst popping the dog out at bedtime, a gorgeous sunset, no street lights, no 24/7 life, no traffic, just the sound of curlews and oystercatchers singing away.

It's lovely to have adventures, but its nice to be home!