Legoland!!

11 July 2018

We all had a great night’s sleep and woke up ready for our adventure to Legoland.

The buffet breakfast was another good meal, with Bugsy chomping some bread and jam, and eating the remains of her deseeded watermelon, and Ian testing out the Danish bacon.

Teeth brushed etc, we hopped onto our bikes and cycled the 13 miles to Legoland. It was undulating and quite windy most of the way, which meant we both had to put a bit of effort in, which we actually both rather enjoyed.

It was all very exciting as we locked up our bikes and headed into the park. First stop was for a wristband for Cornelia with her name on it and my phone number, lest she get lost, and an agreement that if she got separated from us, she would go to the observation tower and wait for us there, however long it took.

Map in hand, off we went, starting at the far end of one side, with the idea of making our way gradually back to the entrance. Of course, the best laid plans….! We’d promised Cornelia a chocolate ice cream as a (admittedly terribly unhealthy) morning snack (for energy, you understand!) but when we arrived at the ice cream parlour, it was closed. We had to honour our promise and made our way through the masses, via a diving princess and a gold Lego brick, and the penguins, eventually finding a little shop which should’ve sold ice cream (according to the map), but didn’t. 🙄 Instead, Cornelia settled for a chocolate muffin and a chocolate milk (argh!), and Ian and I treated ourselves to a coffee mocha frappe and a strawberry frappe respectively.

All sugared-up, off we went for our first ride, The Temple, which was a line of carriages, each with two guns, and you had to shoot lasers at the different coloured lights to score points, whilst riding through the temple, full of pirates treasure, wizards etc, all crafted from Lego.

All fired up, Bugsy was desperate to go on as much as she possibly could: the Fire Brigade (a race in a Lego fire engine to pump your way down the track, and hose down the fire); the Pirate water thing (a spinning car on the water); the Dragon (a rollercoaster through a castle); the Pulley (a hoist to pull yourselves up to the top of the tower as many times as you could, while it rotated); a carousel; the Flying Eagle (a proper rollercoaster); and after a quick look around Mini Land and a diversion to the playpark, we went on the monorail and finished off with the airplanes!

In between all this, we squeezed in a lunch of chicken nuggets for the toddler and a really tasty chicken salad for us. It was just as well we were cycling home!

Cornelia was distraught that we had the leave, even with the understanding that we were coming back tomorrow, but she clambered back onto the bike, and off we pootled. Into a headwind. Almost all the way back. In fact, the only time we didn’t really have a headwind was when Ian decided to follow the Google Maps navigation, down a road marked “dead end”, instead of staying on on the nice tarmac road we’d been travelling along. The road turned into a gravelly track, which then turned into an unrideable (at least for me on my road bike) steep downhill path, littered with slates and rocks, gravel, tree roots etc. I may have grumbled slightly to myself, before remembering that I should always be aware that I am teaching Cornelia about handling difficult situations, so caught them up them on the road that we eventually rejoined declaring “what an adventure that was!” at the same time that Ian said almost exactly the same thing.

Back at the hotel, we changed out of our sweaty clothes, into semi-respectable supper kit, before enjoying another meal at the hotel restaurant. Tonight we all finished off with ice cream and wafer biscuits! My Caxton card was declined again, which meant we wasted time trying to sort it out again, but ended up having to use the Tesco card again. Most annoying!

We managed to sneak Ian past the football which was on in the foyer, and dashed upstairs to put the Toddler to bed. Thankfully, she was once again completely exhausted and settled for one story before falling straight to sleep. I spent ages trying to sort out playing the football on my laptop from the start of the game, but it was having none of it, and we ended up picking up the game in the second half, when England were still ahead… what a shame when Croatia then scored twice, but hey, c’est la vie.

We still need to decide what we are doing for the last few days of our Europe trip. Just Day Two at Legoland to get through first!!