The highlights of Darlington

So let me take you on a journey of our day in Darlington today...

Top left: We awoke to happy little balls of fur trying to get into the spare bedroom to sleep on the bed. Here we have Rocky, Fletch and Louie asleep on the bed in the spare bedroom. Unfortunately Michael seems to be quite allergic to long haired cats and didn't have such a great time around them as I did. Indy decided to sleep next to the radiator, instead of next to the smelly boys.

Top right: Despite the rain, we decided to take a trip to High Force, as we couldn't get there yesterday. It seems this wasn't to be on this trip; after driving for about half an hour, the roads were too covered with snow and so we turned back. No waterfalls for us! The good thing is though that I then checked the Edinburgh weather forecast and it looks like we're due to have snow tomorrow morning too - I CANNOT wait. We all know how much I love running in the snow.

Bottom left: We then decided to go to the Bowes Museum to see the mechanical swan, that apparently performs there each day at 2pm. What it actually does is still a mystery as I'm clearly too cheap to pay the £9 entry fee. A mightily impressive building though! If you look closely you can see that there are some neon numbers on the building - 7, 201,964,238. This is to publicise the Gavin Turk exhibition at the museum. The neon numbers signify the number of people alive on the planet at the time the exhibition launched at 6pm on Friday. They apparently used complex algorithms and modelling software to calculate this.

Bottom right: this is my sister, Jane, enjoying the smallest ice cream in the world. We went to Archers, which is a farm shop that makes their own ice cream. It was delightful and what else would you do in a freezing cold day? This came free with her hot apple cinnamon drink.

In other news, we've had a lovely time at Jane and Tony's need house, generally playing scrabble and watching all 3 Iron Man films. Exactly what weekends were made for. Thank you to you both for your awesome hospitality.

I'm now on the train home to see my wee man!