Laidback and Local

Wychbold (pronounced witch-bold)
Monday September 16

Sam:

When we got up in the morning we decided to go and get some food from the grocery store. We got home and then we had a bit of a break and we had lunch, which was pizza.

After that we went to a place called Jinney Ring, which is a big craft centre. It’s a bunch of wooden buildings around a big field with a pond in the middle. There are lots of people working at it who each have their own little shops where they create different things. For example, there’s a glass blower, chocolate maker, and violin carver.

My favourite place was the violin carver because when we were talking to the man, he explained with a ton of detail how he makes his violins like the way Stradivarius made them (Stradivarius was a violin maker a few hundred years ago). We saw the wood he uses and how he makes stencils and uses interesting tools, like tiny planes and chisels. He does all of the work by hand. It’s takes him about a month to make one violin.

Charlotte:

In Jinney Ring, there was an outside place I wanted to go so we went. There were a lot of ducks and sculptures. The sculptures were made by the artists who have shops there.

I saw lots of people feeding ducks, and a man gave me some duck feed. It was so cute – they all ran up in started eating the food. They were a bit aggressive. They all fought over the food. One of them had a sore foot. My mom thought another duck may have trampled it.

After that, I saw two horses. They were both boys. One was brown and I named him Ryan. The other one was black with white ankles, and I called him Raven. He walked right up to me. I petted him a lot and he really liked it. I found some apples and fed Raven. He wouldn’t take it from my hand at first, so I put it on the ground, and he ate it. I found a second one and have it to Ryan. I started to really become friends with Raven. I hope to see him again.

Next we went to Webb’s, which is a big garden centre with other things in it. There were animals, furniture, a grocery store, toys, books and lots more. I liked the chameleon, the bunnies, and the guinea pigs best. Once, my dad called me over to show me a big box of meal worms. Gross!

We had a snack of fizzy raspberry juice (I didn’t like it, but my mom thought it was delicious) and Victoria Sandwich cake. It was good but very sweet.

For supper, we had beans and potatoes from Sue and Alan’s allotment with some chicken “goujons” (we call them chicken fingers in Canada). We treacle tart for dessert (treacle tart is basically a ginormous butter tart). Yummy, yummy, yummy!

Mom:

After the kids went to bed, Brad and I tried out a couple of the local brews…