Tag: crayke

Family & Friends, Travel Adventures

UK Day 8: London by way of Sherwood Forest

Leaving Crayke Manor was hard, mostly because I fear it might be another decade before seeing those relatives again. Our next stop is London for a week. Amir and I went in 2014 after graduating from medical school, but none of the kids or Liza have been.

Archery lesson from the Merry Men

We took the foot path down to The Major Oak, one of the great old trees in the UK. It’s thought to be anywhere from 800-1100 years old, with a trunk 36 feet in diameter. That’s a three story building!

Catapult!

At the Major Oak, there’s a court of small tents, each with a kid-friendly activity. Some are free, some like archery just a few pounds. The kids tried both archery and catapulting – they were fast learners.

Planting a baby succulent garden

Sherwood Forest was the perfect midway stop between Crayke and London. Trying to do 5 hours straight with everyone in our crew would have been impossible, or at least a recipe for meltdowns and screams from the backseat.

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest

We arrived to our AirBnB in London right around 6:30pm. It was a smooth checkin process, and the place is nice with plenty of square footage, especially for a big city.

There is one odd thing – for as nice as the place is, the owners most definitely still live here. Roughly 90% of the cabinets and closets are “taped off” and used by the owners’ items. If you break the seal, the sticker changes colors and you get fined £50 ($63) per sticker. Anyone who has ever had kids knows that a 1.5 and 3 year old just LOVE peeking into cabinets and drawers. As the lady said “per seal” I just saw dollar bills floating up up and away. When I pushed back, she backed down and said to just let them know if the kids break one on accident and we won’t be charged. Phew.

Still, there’s not much space left for our things, and the blue stickers everywhere somewhat cheapen what is otherwise a beautiful home. There’s also a pair of the dad’s running shoes tucked to the side in the hallway, and family photos everywhere. We feel a bit like we are invading their space. I’ve just never had this experience before, especially at this price point.

The location here is spectacular- in Chelsea, surrounded by the Egyptian and Spanish embassies… Amir said we are close to where parliament meets up, so it’s a very cosmopolitan and diverse area. It’s also perfectly situated next to a tube station (deliberate on our part), as we plan to take the tube all over the city this week.

We ordered Vietnamese via Uber Eats tonight as we just didn’t have the energy to head to the grocery store, and the kids were too far gone to risk eating out. It was delicious and a great way to refill with fresh veggies to offset all those pies from last week.

Amir has just informed me that we may not have hot water on two of the three floors, so in only one bathroom… not sure how that is going to go. We are contemplating changing places. No hot water to shower might be a deal breaker.

– Steph

A budding Robin Hood
Family & Friends, Food & Drink, Travel Adventures

UK Days 6 & 7: Arrival at Crayke Manor and celebrations with family

Today’s post is combined as I was just too spent last night to make it happen. When the sun came up yesterday, the first thing we did was explore the grounds here at Crayke Manor. We arrived the night before after dark , so we hadn’t been able to take in much of the scenery. I made a little virtual tour of the manor which you can check out here.

Mini horses just outside our gate

We had an hour before the local cafe was set to open for breakfast, so we turned left instead of right and quickly found some new friends. Two small horses greeted us with neighs but were disappointed to find we had empty hands instead of apples. Across from the horse pen was a small farm with fresh eggs for sale using an honor box for payments.

Four of the 3-wheeled Invacars

There were stables in the back of the farm house with a more majestic horse and an odd collection of Invacars, Britain’s 3-wheel solution to helping disabled citizens get around. The program existed in the 1970s as a government-sponsored aid to the disabled where they could get a 3-wheeled car for free. Rumor is they discontinued the program due to safety issues with the cars. Bright side though was if you did flip it over it was light enough you could flip it right back.

Back of the neighbor’s barn

Throughout the day, Amir’s relatives began to arrive. Uncles, Aunties – cousins twice (maybe three times) removed. Amir was born in London and moved to the US at age 5, but with the exception of his nuclear family, all the other Brits are still here in England. When we got married almost 10 years ago, it was difficult and expensive for any of the relatives across the pond to make the trip. I met a few when Amir and I traveled to England in June 2014 after graduating medical school. That was nearly a decade ago.

Jack, Helen, Linda, Angela and Malcom

Since everyone was arriving at different time on Friday, we were quite sure no one would want to be burdened with cooking. Amir found an amazing private Chef online – Shaun “The Cook in the North” – who drove three hours to the house and whipped us up 12 courses of Spanish tapas for all 15 of us. He comes to you with ingredients, kitchen tools, dishes and everything. He cooks, and almost most importantly cleans up, too. So you have NOTHING to do – except maybe decide red vs white.

Shaun – The Cook in the North

We sat 12 of us to a round table, outdoors, under a miraculously rain-free English sky. We passed dishes randomly at first, quickly realizing we needed to go clockwise to keep some semblance of sanity.

Auntie Linda reads #1LittleSister a story

Shaun was still cleaning up the kitchen when I had to throw in the towel and head to bed… at 10pm I’d been up since 6am… I was exhausted and maybe a little tipsy. Our plans for the next morning were nebulous, but I knew I could count on the kids waking up from 6:30-7:30 at the latest.

Crayke Day 7

#1LittleSister let me sleep until 7:00 this morning. And by some stroke of travel luck, she’s been falling back asleep on my chest for another thirty minutes after I pull her from the crib.

Dada and #1LittleSister

I wasn’t brave enough to revisit the shower this morning. Yesterday when I took a shower I struggled to figure out which dials did what, and wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. When I initially turned the water on, a geyser shot up from the tub where the water should have been draining out. I was quite sure I’d wrecked the plumbing for the whole house. But it turns out I just had it in “douche” mode instead of shower, and that was exactly as it was supposed to be.

This afternoon we dropped Liza off in York to take some time off and explore. The rest of us headed to the York Birds of Prey Center. There we were up close with hawks, owls, eagles and falcons. Of course the skies opened up for the first time on our trip and drenched us. But we still caught some new sights and had a great outing.

Making friends at the Birds of Prey Center

Back at the house today we all relaxed, enjoyed some beer and wine, and geared up for a casual dinner. Michael made an amazing bolognese, accented by dessert by Linda. We were introduced to Colin the Caterpillar, which is apparently the standard cake/dessert that every English child grows up with.

#1LittleSister attacking Colin the Caterpillar

Just before sitting down for dinner, the adults all enjoyed a champagne toast. Wine has been flowing freely tonight, so I’m quite sure Amir (my editor) will send me many edits in the morning. By all accounts this has been an amazing weekend reuniting and getting to know many relatives here in England. Tomorrow we are of to London for the week.

– Steph

Family & Friends, Travel Adventures

UK Day 5: Traveling to Crayke by way of Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall

Checkout from our AirBnB was 10am, but our rental car was not ready until noon. Have no fear though – moving anywhere with three under 6 naturally eats up two extra hours in time.

Today we traveled from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Crayke, England (near York) which straight shot is a 4 hour drive. We decided to breakup the trip with a visit to Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall.

View from atop the tower of Vindolanda

Vindolanda was an auxiliary fort built (and rebuilt) by the Romans who occupied it from 85 AD to 370 AD. At any given time there were 500-1000 troops station there who came from as far as France and North Africa. The fort was abandoned around 410 AD as The Roman Empire declined.

Watch tower along the wall

The first known account of Vindolanda after it was abandoned was a mention of the site in the book Britannia, published in 1586. Modern excavations began in the 1930s and continue to this day. It’s estimated that only 25% of the site is unearthed, and that the teams will need to dig for another 150 years at their current rate.

After Vindolanda, we jumped back in the van and drove just a half mile up the hill to Steel Rigg, one of the many access points to Hadrian’s Wall. Just a short walk from the car park (AKA parking lot), you enter a wooden gate and are immediately greeted by sheep. And rams. So many sheep.

Not a bad life for these guys

#1LittleSister was thrilled at the chance to see real sheep up close. Her favorite activity right now is an iPhone game for littles called Peekaboo Farm. You tap on the barn door and it opens to reveal a farm friend who makes its noise and then they say the name. “Bahhh SHEEEP!”

Hadrian’s Wall spans down the hill from the sheep and up a steep incline to another hill across a ravine. The wall spans a total of 73 miles across the whole of Northern England. We were just seeing a small portion of it. Visiting Hadrian’s Wall has been a bucket list item for Amir since the day I met him. We tried to squeeze it in when we were last in England in 2014 but couldn’t make it happen.

Amir atop Hadrian’s Wall

There was no way we could all make that climb with the two youngest in tow, so he embarked on a solo sojourn. The cliffs are so tall that they dwarfed him in size. I’d lost sight of him until I realized he was the small spec at the very top waving vigorously like the wacky waving inflatable flailing arm man.

This wall was inspiration for The Wall in Game of Thrones

Tonight we’re finishing the back half of the drive to our house in Crayke. This drive has given me more time than usual to write, but I’m a little bummed we’ll arrive after dark and will have to wait until the morning to explore the grounds here. Tomorrow we plan to spend the whole day at home, welcoming some of Amir’s English relatives and soaking in the atmosphere of our new temporary home.

– Steph

Some of the different lichen and mosses at Vindolanda