We began our adventures at a Starbucks in Farnham. Over coffee we discussed our plans for the day and finally settled on a family friendly pub for lunch and on to a fair in Alton.
Lunch at The Hen and Chicken consisted of baguette sandwiches (cheese and tomato or prawns and lettuce) or chicken and sausage kebabs. The pub had a great wooden obstacle course for Madison to play on while we visited and waited for our food. (Her best time-2 minutes 4 seconds).
Then it was onward to Alton for the fair. We wander the stalls on High Street, pausing to examine the classic cars on display and then headed back to the fair. Carnival rides were set up in an empty lot for people to enjoy. At only a £1 a ride it was great fun.
The boys plus Madison enjoyed a crashing into one another on the bumper cars and but sadly it was only the Sparkman clan who braved the other more "substantial" fair ground rides.
While Madison, Rob and I braved the upside down spinning rides, Lillian enjoyed time with Stewie and the others.
Yes we were completely upside-down and spinning rather quickly.
We all loved it- even Madison!
After the last upside down spinning ride we returned to our cars and headed back to Godalming.
Stewie taught Madison a traditional British game called CONKERS (although I have not found anyone but Stewie and Wikipedia that has heard of it, let along played it) which the two of them enjoyed playing together.
Basically you collect conkers (Buckeyes) and use a cork screw to put a hole in the middle of it and then string it on a piece of string (or one of Madison's hair ribbons if you have nothing else). Then you take turns hitting each others conkers trying to break the other person's off their string. First one to break the other's conker completely off the string wins.
The scoring gets a bit tricky- Madison's conker is a 4er (it has won 4 times- well it actually only won once but it between Stewie's which was a 3er and she get his points).
There are also lots of other rules you can add to the game. Like if the conker flies out of the persons hand you can yell "STAMPIE" and try to stomp on their conker while it is on the ground and win that round. You can also call out if the conkers strings get tangled and get an extra turn.
Needless to say, we have a whole drawer of conkers waiting to be played with.- so beware.
It was a great weekend with friends filled with laughter and great memories.
