I started using these boots for the  Isle of Wight walking festival. There are apparently over 600 walks to choose from over the course of two weeks led by all sorts of people some by organisations and many by just ordinary members of the public who want to share a favourite walk with others.  It’s a brilliant thing and we have enjoyed many walks over the years we have been here.

Cream-spot Tiger moth

Martin has been leading a few walks in the walking festival, all drawn from a new walks booklet he has been involved in developing.  Yesterday we took Jonathan along with us (girls too blistered from Walk the Wight) and did a brilliant walk starting at  Mottistone heading down the coastal path to Brook  and past the Longstone back to the car park.  There were fantastic views of Freshwater Bay throughout.  We saw a Cream-spot Tiger moth and Martin told us about some of the conservation based farming that was going on. As well as this though we also had the “no school today” question.

Martin at the front said he had 3 lots of the conversation, Jonathan said he had 5 lots.  Martin mentioned he was asked about exams (Jonathan is 9 and looks young for his age – how worried do you need to be about exams at that age!) and “doesn’t he miss out on seeing his friends?”

I was trying to bring up the back and had time for a more lengthy conversations about HE.  I just had the one conversation though.  We did the standard questions:

Exams  -  ”well the girls have got a few already and we only need the ones they need to get where they want to go”  ”Actually finding somewhere to sit exams if you want to do them is the most difficult part of HEing  if you as me”

Socialisation: – “They’ve got lots of friends and get together to do various activities.   ” “There’s a HE group on the Island with about 70 families in it”   “They go to clubs” “socialising with a group of 30 children the same age doesn’t seem very natural to me”     “The girls did Walk the Wight on Saturday with a group of teens ranging from 18 down to 13″

Being checked up on – “Local Authorities tend to interpret the law in a variety of ways – we send them a report once a year”

Then there was actually an interesting question:

“So what would you consider to be success, how would you feel you had succeeded?”

So I guess I should have gone on about my educational philosophy blah blah.  But I just said “I’d want them to end up doing something that they felt happy and content doing.”  If I was considering it in more detail for a written answer I’m sure I would have had far more to say and would have phrased it slightly better – I’m not really so interested in what they end up doing but that in their lives they feel contented and happy – but actually for me that it the most important thing.

So here we have Jonathan leaping between the staw bale sofas and being a very sucessful volunteer collector for Gift to Nature.

Don’t Adam and Holly look beeeautiful

Bee graffiti

Photo courtesy of Ian Boyd

Once that was out of the way we got down to the serious matter of playing on the beach and trying to find innovative ways of falling into Grange Chine. I’ll try and post some video footage next week.

I was going to put a photo of our Sandman on this post, but I can’t seem to remember how to put the photos there. oh well. Anyway because we were so incredibly beautiful the county press woman came over to me and Ruth and said because you’re so amazingly beautiful can I take your picture……well something along those lines….ish

Then we did the Lizard walk at Ventnor with Island 2000 Trust as part of the IoW walking festival. No lizards as it was too cold

This evening I had ants in my pants and decided to do another walking pole walk. This time I was accompanied by Bex, who is normally too embarrassed to be seen with a parent with poles, as we were unlikely to be seen by anyone too important.