We are 20 days into perfectly temperate, sometimes even hot English sunshine. I’ve put on SPF 30 every day and still gotten a sunburn. It’s starting to feel like that scene in Dumb & Dumber where they take a wrong turn and say “I thought the Rockies would be rockier than this, that John Denver’s full of shit”. We’ve had more than a few moments where we’ve wondered if we’re in California rather than England.

This morning we drove to a hike at the Longshaw Estate. Millie has been complaining of feeling “like I’m gonna throwed up” on our drives. It’s hard to know if she is serious or if it’s residual anxiety from the incident a few days ago. I remember being a kid and begging my parents to stop, and now I’m the parent trying to convince her it’s not too bad and we can power through. The cycle continues.

We arrived on our hike and set off. I’d give Millie a B+ on this one. We passed the time by doing a “drag this stick to see how long of a line you can create” challenge, which lasted about 8 minutes. When that wore out she told us bad jokes, like “knock knock. Who’s there? Rock. Rock who? Rock nobody it’s actually just grass.” You can replace rock and grass with whatever other objects are in view.

When these two activities failed we doled out snacks and had races. The trail was pretty easy and we ended up at a pretty little stream where she paddled around.

On our walk back she put her sweater in her hat and pretended to be a kangaroo with a baby in her pouch (her dream). We had our pre-packed lunches in the car when we got back. I’m happy to report that we’ve been doing a great job of self-catering and saving a ton of money.

From here we drove 15 minutes to Bakewell, home of the Bakewell tart. And apparently Bakewell pudding and Bakewell slice, which are slightly different form factors but similar in spirit. We got one of each, because when in Rome.

We sat on the curb outside of the bakery to try the local delicacies. I don’t know if they named Bakewell after the well-baked tarts or the tarts after the town (a lot of pressure for the early bakers of the settlement), but they were delicious. When Millie tried the fruitcake, with all its raisin-y dried fruit goodness, she said “this one tastes like England”. She is 100% correct.

From here we gave her the choice to drive another 20 minutes to see a cave, or walk 5 minutes to play at the local park. I’m sure you can guess what miss carsick chose.

There weren’t many other kids but she played happily for an hour or so. They had a splash pad area and it was actually warm enough to play in it, so she did that for a while.

Then we drove home, had happy hour outside of our Airbnb (milk and wine), and made Shepherd’s pie for dinner. Another successful day in California.