I've just come back from a lovely weekend away. My daughters and their families had booked this week away on a barge and asked us to go along with them for Saturday and Sunday nights. It was really good fun! The weather helped because although it was showery on Saturday when we went to collect the barge, it was absolutely glorious on Sunday and Monday.

The girls had worked out how far we expected to travel in a couple of days and so we parked the car in a suitable place that distance up the canal and one of them transported us back to the barge. Then we travelled up the Shropshire Union canal until we reached where the car had been left and we hopped off and they went on their way up towards Chester.

As it was such a lovely day yesterday and as we had passed traffic at a standstill for miles and miles on the M6 on our way to collect the barge on Saturday, we decided to come home slowly on smaller roads. We found a lovely spot for a picnic lunch and travelled through lots of villages we had not been to before, stopping at some of them for a look round, then got back just in time to give the hens some corn before it got dark. My son had been popping round to look after my animals for me while we were away.

One daughter cooked dinner on Saturday night and the other on Sunday. My contribution to the culinary side of things comprised 2lbs of flour worth of scones, a very large pot of homemade bramble jelly, a banana cake and a dozen fresh eggs. Neither the scones or the cake lasted very long... So we had nothing to do but enjoy ourselves at 3 miles an hour. I could cope with life at that speed!