A Family Picnic

We were at my parents house at the weekend for a family picnic. Now our family don’t do things by halves so a family picnic can be quite a big event. Most family picnics involve a picnic blanket, a few sandwiches the odd scotch egg, some crips and maybe a game of frisbee or a snooze in the sun. Not ours…. Our family picnic was a little larger than that and attracted the attention of first the police and then the TV camera crews!

I’ll get to that later as my day started with a nice little bike ride out towards the banks of the River Severn at Purton.

Purton

Purton

The roads were quiet and the conditions good, except for a huge oversize load that I came across just a few miles from the end of my ride. I had to stop to wait for it to pass, but in order for it to do so, the electricity company had to take down cables, as did BT and the entire convoy of police escort vehicles, utility company vans, cherry pickers and the oversize load itself had to nudge their way along the road.

Back at my parents house I had breakfast, followed for some reason by a second breakfast of bacon, scrambled egg and beans on toast before we got ready to head off for a picnic. The idea behind the picnic was to get the entire Cole family together in one place at the same time. With what is supposedly the largest family in the south west that was never going to happen but an informal picnic in the grounds of Blaise Castle might at least get a fair few of them together and a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon had to help. My Dad is one of ten children and each of those children have large extended families several of which I think have four generations alive and well, so this was going to be quite a large event. I guess there’s no real definition of where the family begins and ends, but in essence this was descendents (and their partners) of my Dad’s parents. We think that there are currently around 350 living descendents which is pretty good going, but no one knows for sure.

We got there early so that we could head off into the woods to find a geocache. The cache itself was near to the Blaise Castle Folly with some nice views from Lovers Leap. We forgot to take a pencil with us though so had to take a photo of the log book to prove that we had found it.

We then headed back to the car to get our picnic stuff and joined the family. It was a glorious sunny afternoon, perfect for a picnic. There was obviously plenty of family members that we knew and chatted with and plenty of new ones that we had never met before. Everyone was mingling and having fun and as the gathering grew, we attracted the attention of the police and a police officer came over to see what was going on. Satisfied that it was indeed just a ‘family picnic’ they left us to it, no doubt keeping an eye on us from a distance.

Family Picnic

Family Picnic

The food was going down well and then a huge game of rounders was organised, along with sack races, egg and spoon races and general fun in the sun. The local TV channel had got wind of our family picnic too and a camera crew was soon on the scene, filming our picnic and interviewing some of us. For some reason they even asked me to rustle through a box of crisps which made it to the news item!

After lots of chatting, food and fun, the congregation slowly dispersed as the afternoon drew on – no doubt much to the relief of the police!

Morgan had been in the playground with his cousins so we collected him on the way to the car and sent him back up to say goodbye to ‘Ninny and Grandad’. When he returned he informed us that he had made arrangements to stay with them and his cousins for the week and that we could collect him next weekend! He seemed quite keen and we didn’t mind so we returned to the picnic to make more arrangements and ended up unloading the car so that we could leave him with some clothes, a camp bed and wash kit and then driving home on our own. It was odd going from a family picnic of hundreds to a drive home without Morgan and it’ll be weird not having him here for the week but I’m sure he’ll have fun at my parents house with his cousins who are also staying with them.

5 Responses

  1. Avatar forComment Author Simon Green says:

    Hi,

    I’m Simon from “That Morning Thing” on Sam FM, a local radio station in Bristol.

    Every week I like to get a caller on who has connections to Bristol and has been in the news.

    Would you or anyone from your family be willing to come on the show, by phone, tomorrow morning and tell us all about the family picnic?

    Many thanks,

    Simon Green

  2. Avatar forComment Author mum says:

    I would have but Kia was doing interview on the radio and then collecting her results and then a live phone in with her results so I was involved with that
    Shame really as I think the picnic was a good ideal especially the rounders game played by a 76 year old right down to the very young

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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