The lads had a good time in the skatepark ar Redcar tonight. A mum brought two very young children in on their scooters but they were overwhelmed with all the big lads belting about so I suggested to her that she take them to a big half pipe in the far corner where none of the wild bunch were rushing around . It's great she brings such young ones to the park and once they were out of the line of fire they started to scoot and have fun. A dad came in with his three lads , he is a regular and it is obvious every time that he has just finished work ,he's in his overalls and taken his lads to the skate park. Total respect because I think the nation needs more parents that don't so much get involved with their kids but get them to activities that they can get involved in . The dad just sits quite for about 90 minutes quitetly recuperating . A nice night and I had a good read. Our youngest Clifford did well with his GCSEs today specifically getting an A at his maths which means he can go on to do Further maths at the 6th form in a years time without having to do any resits. He can just concentrate on his A Level work this year which will take the sting out of the maths next year. In maths forewarned is forarmed with knowledge .

Yesterday we had a day out in the Lake District and walked "Catbells" a hill on the West side of Derwent Water near Keswick. There was a severe weather warning for a lot of rain so I was really looking forward to it . The Lake District is great when it is wet. It was a nice hill and the clouds were low, just 2 to 3 hundred metres up and like long tankers bumping into the hills and the air pressure under them pushing them up and over the ridges . There were a couple of scrambles and I gave the lads a firm word about taking care on edges with drops. Even small 2 metre drops can cause severe injury because what you fall onto is often very jagged. Fiona and I took the easier scrambles because it was so rainy and slippy. On the path back underneath Catbells we saw an amazing series of mini-earth slumps , a big one and a landslip along side. I love seeing soil creep , the steady movement of the topsoil and turf down a hill due to the underlying instability of water moving through it and seeing the ripples on the sides of hills and streams is always very interesting but yesterday my eye was caught by a whole series of small platforms sticking out of the hill which were small slumps. The turf had remained intact proof of the slow velocity of the water but alongside all of this there had been a big landslip and from the edges of this you could see that the turf was no deeper than 20cm. Further proof of the movement of the turf on the hill is that the National Trust had restored the path and cut vertically into the hill and there was an 10cm overhang of turf as it was slowly migrating down . Good stuff and we had a nice discussion in the pouring rain about what was going on . After the walk we wanted to take a rowing boat out on Derwent Water but didn't fancy it when we realised our walking clothes were soaking wet and we couldn't be bothered to get back into wet togs just to row around a lake . Occasionally we are sensible! We ate at the Loose Box in Keswick followed by home and an episode of Star Trek. A great day and it was nice to get really wet for a change the experience having finally convinced my lads that wet walking is as much fun as dry.