A Quick Family Visit

by Alan Cole · Monday, September 9th, 2013

Phew, that was a quick trip to my parents house and back! Usually we go for a whole weekend, leaving here on Friday straight after school and returning on Sunday, but with so much going on here and a trip to London to prepare for we didn’t have much time so had to make it a quick visit.

We were going in order to celebrate my sisters ‘commitment’ to her partner Mike. They’ve both been married before, both have children and didn’t want to get married again. They did however want to make their relationship a little more formal and official so were having a party on Saturday night in their local pub – the Dinneywicks in Kingswood, Gloucestershire.

We had a busy morning on Saturday, baking cakes, doing some shopping and getting ready to go and then left here at around 1pm. This meant we arrived in Kingswood at around 3:30pm and went to the local show to see if any of the family were there. They weren’t but we had a quick wander around looking at some of the entries to the various show day competitions and browsing some of the stalls before heading to my parents house. This gave us a little bit of time to chill and chat whilst Morgan played with his cousins. We also met Mikes children, Isaac, Mason and Liam for the first time. We then had dinner at Trudi’s house where I ate too much as usual. With a big race less than a week away I should have more self-control. I’m in the middle of a taper so I’m doing much less exercise than usual so I should eat less too, but if there’s food in front of me I just keep eating!

We then headed to the Dinneywicks for the party. It was pretty busy there and I think this was all due to Mike and Trudi’s party – as far as we could tell it is usually a very quiet pub, but tonight it was packed. We of course only knew our side of the family and a couple of the friends so we sat with them, chatted, ate some more and kept ourselves to ourselves really – sitting in a noisy, smelly pub isn’t really our thing and we hate having to shout in order to have a conversation so we didn’t really mingle much. We did help with the photos and help eat the nibbles and cake and it was good to see some family members that we hadn’t seen for ages. We didn’t stay until the very end though.

: Trudi, Mike and Morgan

: Trudi, Mike and Morgan

: Trudi, Mike and my Mum and Dad

: Trudi, Mike and their children

: The Cake

I was up early the next day to drive into Yate swimming pool for a short swim. Again nothing too strenuous as I’m tapering for the World Triathlon Championships on Friday, just 2.5km in total, enough to keep me going. It was then back to my parents for breakfast before we headed home with a stop at Hampton Court in Herefordshire after a flying visit to family.