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The Great Outdoors

On Monday at 9:30am I stood on the pavement outside our house in the pouring rain wrestling with our latest purchase…

We bought a second hand bike trailer a few weeks ago and up until this point I was fairly convinced it was the best decision we’d ever made. But, as the rain soaked through my (not so) waterproof I was beginning to regret everything and and a sofa day in front of Netflix was increasingly appealing.

Once the trailer was assembled the boys were released from the house in their new and fully functioning rain gear. They spent around 7 seconds in the rain before climbing into the waterproof trailer. I on the other hand may as well have been wearing a cotton onesie with my clothes weighing close to a metric tonne.

Determined to live an outdoor life, I carried on regardless, dragging my clothes and the boys excitedly through mud and puddles as the rain poured down. Spurred on by the laughter and shouting of my passengers I probably went further than I should. But, eventually we emerged from the wilderness and found a cafe and playground where the boys put their rain gear to the test – it held up a lot better than my own and they would have stayed playing in the rain longer. But, I was starting to feel weirdly nauseous and didn’t think I had much time left so we loaded back in for the journey home.

When we made it back to the pavement outside our house we were barely recognisable – the bike and boys were covered in mud and I’d developed a weird twitch. So maybe the outdoors had given me mild hypothermia and maybe it would take a week to clean my bike but we’d found adventure in the real world and that beats Netflix every time. 

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