Reality behind the photos

Mr Mc&W and I are sat with a huge glass of red wine looking at our photos of today and laughing. If we had posted them on Facebook our friends would have thought we had the perfect day out, but that was not the case......

We had decided to visit Peterbrough for the day, we were rather excited at the thought of a cathedral, I was very excited about lunch out and then there was a steam railway.

On arrival, in fact on trying to enter the multi-storey car park we remembered the roof box was still attached to the car and had to preform a rather dodgy u turn in order to prevent being wedged under the barrier. We then found a rather interesting looking outdoor car park, complete with a fing and jeffing pensioner who could not work the NCP app.

The cathedral was beautiful and we made the decision we would come back to admire it's full beauty later, this proved to be a mistake. Off we went to find the steam trains.... 

We walk under a rather old and spectacular iron bridge, what we had not accounted for was an express train going over said iron bridge when we were underneath. I think we all nearly wet ourselves with fright, the boys hands on their ears and eyes on stalks, with Daddy and Mummy trying to hide our hysterical laughing as it was so funny (sorry kids we did jump as much I promise) ZAP however managed to sleep through this.

On arriving at said railway they had run out of family tickets in the office and were not sure if we could pay by card in the train. We did a mad frantic dash to the loos as the train was due in less than two mins, ten mins later the boys were demanding to know where the train was. The beautiful steam train arrived but no one could tell us if cards could be taken, Mr MC&W had a little chat wondering if anyone had been thrown off a steam train for not having a ticket. 

We walked around looking lost with the buggy, hoping a member of staff would take pity and help us get onto the train. This did not happen so we had the rather heart stopping moment of lifting the buggy on to the train, over what seemed like a grand canyon of a drop. We all sat down ready for the steam train to depart, but the train was just not moving and the boys were getting increasingly bored and excitement levels were fast dropping. We found out some local kids had emptied the water tower and it would be a while before the train could proceed on her journey. By this point we had one crying baby and two very bored children, OB in fact was starting to get very restless and we knew he was not coping with the whole situation, we did not want a meltdown. To top it off we still no idea if we could pay for our tickets so we took the hard decision to get off. Our pictures show a train and a happy family on the train, it's just we did not do the actual journey.

ATM planning our trip with his new best friend the map. This map now goes everywhere we do.

Instead we told the boys they could go in the car ride which they had seen earlier, they were more excited about than the train. We were even told we were the best parents ever!!!. Then we went to poundland and got a whole stack of garden toys.

As mentioned earlier I was rather excited about having lunch out. But we had to avoid the center as mummy had not brought spare clothes and a towel for a visit to a City, silly mummy as she dragged a screaming ATM away form the fountains. Apparently I should have known that there would be water play in the city and be ready for it. Bad Mummy Bad Mummy.

Lunch was a disaster, the boys are fussy eaters and we did not want a full on main meal. We read the menus of about five million places. We even wondered into macdonalds much to the boys delight but the queue was out of the door we turned right around and continued our menu tour of the center.

We finally had lunch at pret and it was lovely really lovely, Mr MC&W and I even shared a bag of kale chips and so romantic checked no green left I am sure you can guess where.

A trip to waitrose later with OB ramming a gentleman trolley saying its packman mummy finished the day.

On arrival home we unpacked the garden toys and had a wonderful time playing frisbee and running around and now with the children asleep we have a huge glass of wine and laughing at the photos and the image we could have shown the world.