Today was our last day with Chris, Karen and the boys in Blackwood, the temperature today is said to be as high as 40 degrees so the plan is to get up really early and go to the beach before it get’s too hot, and for once we managed it.

Everyone, except Liam was up and ready by 8 .30 and on the road to Brighton Beach and it was packed. Dogs are allowed on the beach off the lead until 10am and there were a lot of them. It was really busy as there was also swimming races on so getting a park was a bit difficult but we found one just across the road so that was lucky. This is such a beautiful beach and only 20
mins from the house, we walked the length of the beach and back stopping on the way back for a swim, there was all sorts of different things happening canoeing (even with dogs) paddleboarding, jogging, swimming  and anything you can think of really There was also an exhibition of sculptures some of which we saw at the Mosaic workshop..

Little Coco loved it and at one point went into the water which was deeper than she thought but she swam across and then she was off. She hates it when Karen and the boys are not there so when they were out in the water Coco decided she could swim out to them and made it easily. The water was a little cold but Karen and I had a nice swim and Nick loved snorkelling . Dan
eventually decided it would be good too and came in and then didn’t want to get out neither did Nick but by 10 it was already getting hot and it was time to retreat back to the house for breakfast, bacon sarnie for Dan and I and poached eggs on toast with bacon, beans and avocado for the rest, those boys certainly know how to eat as they’d already had 3 bowls of cereal. How do they stay so slim. After a few games of card for Liam, Paul and Dan it was decided we should go to Loberthal for more beer tasting, but first stop was a large warehouse
type building full of massive Scaletrix tracks where you rent the controllers and race the cars which the boys loved, after it was off to the brewery and guess what they were hungry again so had a large bowl of chips.

From here we headed back to Elizabeth and Bobbie, poor Winston has been ill since Weds not eating or drinking and on Fri he went to the vet but the tablets they gave him he couldn’t keep down. After a terrible night when he had sickness and diarrhoea he had to go to the emergency vet who has kept him in saying it’s gastroenteritis and he’s now on a drip and electrolytes
hopefully he will be home in a couple of day. Apparently they have 4 dogs in with the same thing but it could be caused by having to change his meat as the vets no longer stock the one he was having because a number of other dogs had the same symtoms. Hope he’s better soon.  


Didn’t get to bed till well after midnight after watching the final of the Australian Open I was so glad to see Roger Federer win another open after so long. He had to fight hard to win again Rafael Nadal but he did it. Congratulations Roger