Wednesday Walk Alive with Joy

As a mom, you have to believe that I want my kids to be happy, as much of the time as possible. So when it comes to school pick-ups, I like to give them lots of time to play in the park outside the school with their friends. They get to unwind from the long school day and release all of their pent-up energy before I need to take them home for the evening.

We are blessed that the playground has been managed by the Playground Trust, on behalf of the local Parish, for the past 5-10 years and they have done an amazing job of fundraising to provide a well-equipped playground with climbing frames, Foofi slide, swings, grass football pitch, paved football and a basketball court and tennis courts. So we are there almost every day after school.

But somedays it is just so hot that the river beyond the school beckons. It's a short walk of a couple of hundred metres to the Thames, and we are truly blessed to have such an iconic river on our doorstep. It is 215 miles long, begins its long journey in Gloucestershire, and "flows into the North Sea via the Thames Estuary" in London. source

On a hot summer day, or on the odd unseasonably warm ones in other seasons, you will find me and my boys down at the river's edge, often with a friend or two. They literally pare down to their underwear and jump in, squealing and shouting, alive with joy. It's not deep where they go for a dip and there are no sharp drop-offs. Having said that, we do have to be careful and watch out for passing boats. The above photo was taken on a walk we did a couple of weeks back from the school across out the field and down to the river. It's already Autumn or Fall here but the weather has been kind to us. The kids had a ball splashing about, waving and calling out to the boat owners, and skimming stones. They managed to cool off rather nicely. A bit too cold for me though! My kids are crazy. They just don't seem to feel the cold, and when they do, they say they love the feeling of it on their skin. When other kids are dressed in coats and boots in winter to go walking, mine are in shorts and t-shirts and jumping in muddy puddles for the hell of it😂

After the cool down, the kids got dressed again and we set off on a geocaching treasure hunt along the river's edge. If you don't know what this is you can read more about it here but basically, you sign up either online or via the geocaching app and then you can look for hidden geocaches (treasures) all over the world, although preferably in your immediate area. I must say that it's a fab tool to have on holiday as there is almost always a geocache to be found wherever you may be. Essentially you get a GPS position on a map and track your selected treasure down. Once you are in close proximity, it's down to a good old search for the geocache by sight. They are usually little boxes containing a selection of small "treasures" that one can choose from. You are supposed to take one treasure and replace it with one of your own that you have brought along especially for that purpose. Then you sign the logbook to say you have discovered the treasure. You can also hide geocaches yourself for others to find 😎

The one we found that day was a little test-tube/cylinder thingie only containing a small paper scroll "logbook". My kids located it in the bark of a tree. We didn't have a pen on us as it was a bit of an impromptu bit of geocaching, but we logged the discovery on the app which dates the entry so that others can see when the geocache was last found. This particular one was one of a series of 5. The first 4 give you clues to a colour / numeric code and the 5th is the actual treasure. Once you have all 4 parts of the code, you can unlock the final geocache which should be a treasure box.

We checked out the treasure map as there were supposed to be 4 more along the river but we could only see 3 more so we suspect that someone has removed the final one which is a real shame. We've done a fair bit of geocaching in the past too, often whilst on holiday, and it is great fun! Highly recommended for kids of all ages😊

Anyway, that was the walk that we did that afternoon after school. Not too long, probably about 1/2 hour walking and 1/2 hour playing in the river. We got to go home happy and fulfilled, alive and thriving, after a Wednesday walk in the sunshine.

Next time I'll make sure to take more pics along the Thames path that runs the length of the river. We were unfortunately too absorbed in geocaching this time around and using my phone for the app to locate the treasure. We sometimes do the walk from Eton or Windsor down to Maidenhead along the towpath, and there are some great photos that I can share next time we do that.

Take care one and all and I look forward to reading more of your Wednesday Walks and stories of how you are celebrating being Alive and Thriving.