Sunday June 22, 2014

Tomorrow the internships begin so the students asked to "please can we sleep in?!!" So Teresa and Ed went to 9:00 mass at Sacred Heart Church Kilburn alone. The Newsletter says there are 58 countries and 38 languages represented in the parish, pretty international place.

At 11 am we sounded reveille and quickly headed to St. John's Wood for the Classic and Supercar Pageant. The high street was blocked and over 50 amazing cars: Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Jaguar, Maserati, Bentley, RR, Ford GT40, Shelby GT 500, Mercedes, etc etc were on display. Blaise, Oliver, Christina and Hunter enjoyed a breakfast at a small cafe, Maison Blanc, while Teresa shopped at Boots and Ed was too excited with the cars to eat.

After breakfast and the pageant we headed north toward the Chilterns part of the "green belt" just outside of the M25 ring road. We arrived at Chorleywood (metropolitan tube line) walked down Shire Lane to the bridle path through an ancient woods, and then the footpath that leads to Roughwood Farm. Janice and Martin Hext met us with their dog Archie in the forest before we could get totally lost. We then walked through a field of hay, cut that morning, through a field with the bull, cows and calves, another field this one with sheep and lambs, and then into the new barns area. We then proceeded through the 400 year old barn into the old paddock area.

At the Hext's we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon with conversation, snacks, burgers, sausage and entertained ourselves with a bit of table tennis, tadpole catching in the pond, but undoubtedly the highlight was chasing the pigeons out of the rafters of the barn. Martin had a fish net attached to a very long pole and we scared the pigeons into flight and tried to catch then in the net if they would not leave the barn. We only caught one (well done Blaise) but made a sufficient amount of noise and chaos that the rest flew out on their own accord. After that a a proper pudding of strawberries, lemon cake and cream was served we departed for home arriving at 8:30pm.

Tonight some clothes ironing  (Christina), suit preparation (Hunter), USA soccer anticipation ( Oliver, Blaise, Ed).

Cheers for now.