Thursday, April 10, 2008

The earth moved for us

It's the school holidays, and in our house my wife and I split looking after our two daughters, so that they still get time with Mum and Dad, but we don't use too much of our leave then up with no break at Christmas.

And so it was that I found myself on a Tuesday morning with two energetic, on-the-edge-of-boredom girls. Ten minutes on the internet later, we had decided. Diggerland in Rochester. Just forty five minutes later (and printing the AA route planner and getting the girls to navigate was a stroke of genius!) and we were there.

It's a fantastic place to go - I couldn't believe they actually let you get into a JCB worth anywhere between twelve and sixty thousand pounds, and take the controls. We went on everything - from tractors, to diggers. We sat on the platform of a hydraulic lift as it pushed us up to around fifty feet off the ground; we were seated in the bucket of a giant digger as it swung us around, lifted us up and dropped us from thirty odd feet. I won't forget standing in front of my two daughters, each one at the controls of a matching six tonne earthmover, giggling as they scooped huge craters in the ground.

The girls didn't want to leave, and if I'm honest neither did I. We'll certainly be back - it's a really novel idea, and well worth a day out. The earth certainly moved for us!

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