Thursday 30th October 2008

Simon and I have been wanting to take the children through to Chessington World of Adventure for some time now as it is one of the attractions we can visit for "free" on our Merlin Card which we purchased earlier in the year. Well, as with many of the attractions in England, they are closing for the winter next week so we had to make it this week or not at all and as tomorrow is Halloween we decided on Wednesday night that today was the day come hell or high water or in this case rain, sleet or hail even the fact that the telly forecast the average temperature for the day as between 4-6 degrees did not deter us.

We woke up to a freezing morning, but the sky was clear and that is always a good sign as you can dress for the cold, but the rain is more difficult, especially with Nicholas. Dressed in about 4 layers each with beanies, gloves and boots we set off amidst much excitement. Chessington is about 60kms from home, but thanks to the usual traffic (this time made worse by an accident which forced us to take a detour) the trip took about 1.5hours....my children are becoming so good at long distance travel (thank heavens for DS Lites) and they really don't moan at all, in fact this time it was me getting restless and impatient.

We finally arrived and Chessington was LOVELY - lots of rides for the children which they loved and a zoo which Megan, Simon and I are not tooo sure about. Phillip is a little young to be concerned and he was just delighted with being able to see animals such as Lion, Tigers, Gorillas and Leopard up close....but for the rest of us the enclosures seemed a little bit small, but that said the animals are all in suburb condition and are all breeding which I think is a good sign, still, not something I will rush to do again in a hurry.

After our walk around the zoo, cups of hot chocolate (it was absolutely freezing) and our lovely picnic lunch (you are allowed to take your own food into all these parks) Si decided the queues for all the "big" rides were simply too long and finally agreed to buy express passes which allows you to go directly to the front of the queue rather than having to wait up to 55 minutes for a ride.

The big rides, unfortunately, were just too much for Megan, so while her and I waited Simon and Phillip went on all the big roller coaster rides.....I was quite amazed as Megs is usually the daredevil and Phil is the cautious one, but hormones must be setting in and Megan wanted her feet firmly planted on the floor while Phil was game for absolutely anything.

A lovely lovely day!!!!!!!!!