Quite a bit of time has passed since our last entry. I was doing a good job of staying on top of
this little project, but alas, travel, activity, and exhaustion got the best of
me this week. When we last left our
heroes, they were enjoying a lovely weekend at The Cameron House on Loch Lomond
near Glasgow, Scotland. To begin a new
week, the team awoke early Monday morning to hop on a train headed south to
Sheffield, England. It was an
uneventful, rather quick, 5-hour train ride to our next destination. Upon arriving at the Sheffield train station,
we were met by a wonderful character named Andy who was hired to be our driver
for the week. I cannot sing his praises
enough! He was super kind to the kids,
incredibly accommodating to our schedules, and worked hard to make sure we were
taken care of during our stay. If this
was his professional job, I’d still be pleased, but Andy was simply a good
friend of one of Tim’s colleagues (Sir Childs of Sheffield) who offered Andy
the job for the week. With that being
the case, I can honestly say he went above and beyond serving our family for
the 4 days we stayed in the area.
So, day #1 in Sheffield.
We made our way to our lodging accommodations out a ways from the city
at a farm that had converted the top portion of their barn into an
apartment. We weren’t exactly sure what
they meant when they advertised being on a “working farm” but it didn’t take us
long to realize it was up and running full force, with a very large sheep
pasture approximately 20 ft. from our front door. A horse was our neighbor, three doors down in
its stable. The farm dogs greeted us
every morning and the barn cat never left its bed that was perched in the laundry
room. The apartment had plenty of
space, although a bit more rustic than we had anticipated. At least the kids each had their own bed to
sleep in! It didn’t take us long to
realize, like each of the living spaces we’ve occupied thus far on our journey,
the farm had a couple of “insufficiencies”.
The first being that each room had skylights in the ceiling…I mean it
was a barn and you had to get some natural sunlight in there somehow. Unfortunately the skylights poured light
directly onto each of our beds every morning, which made it difficult to stay
asleep for any amount of time after the sun came up (Tim awoke each day at 4:15am). The next downside was not being able to
locate dishwashing liquid or detergent to either start the dishwasher or to
wash them all by hand. I used the same
coffee mug all week! Easily fixed, I
know, but we only went to the grocery store once and at that point I didn’t
know we needed it. Spending all week
with a sink-load of dirty dishes should have made me feel right at home, but it
is one thing to be able to do something about it and choose not to; it is a
whole other situation when you don’t have the resources to accomplish the
job. The dishes literally mocked me
every time I went to the sink! And
finally, being on a trip for this long, I kind of had it in my mind that I
would be able to do laundry while at this location so that was my plan. Well, while the apartment had advertised a
washer and dryer there was no mention that it was a shared facility with the
people in the main house and all the animals on the farm. I went into the laundry room and was met by
literally loads of laundry that were in “line” to be washed. There was no way I was going to be able to
break in there, especially since I checked one washing machine 3 different
times in a 12 hour period and found the exact same load in there each
time. Again, each of these things seems
inconsequential when viewed in the big picture, but recalling as much detail as
I can will hopefully help bring each of these places and stories more to life
when we re-read them in the years to come.
One thing is for sure. This trip
has definitely stretched me to be more easy-going and have a more “take it as
it comes” attitude…I’m not sure just how much longer I can keep it up though!
Picture of the barn/apartment
Our neighbors to the left
Our neighbor downstairs
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