The Street Where We Live...
Recently I have been thinking about how lucky I am to live where I live. It may not be the 'best' of areas but it is OK and I have everything on my doorstep.I live in a small town close to Bolton in the North-West and I don't drive. I have my reasons for that (they are probably another post) but a main reason is that I don't really need to. Within a 10 minute push from my front door I have Tesco and ASDA, a small town centre which includes a pharmacy, greengrocer, Dorothy Perkins (for fashion emergencies!), every takeaway you could wish for (apart from Thai but I don't often have an inkling for that), the doctor's surgery, dentist, Post Office...in fact everything you need to function on a day-to-day basis. For more exotic needs we have a main bus route on the road at the end of our street which will get me to Bolton in about 15 minutes and to Manchester in 45 minutes (off-peak). Bud loves going on the bus, mainly because he gets to charm all the old ladies
Red Rose Daddy's Parents live two streets away and his brother and his family, and his uncle and his family live in our street! My Parents and Brother live about two miles away. Yes, it is close but it works. We are a tight knit family and Bud loves being able to see the rest of the family so much.
The most important thing, for me, is what Bud gets out of where we live. We have a lovely public library at the end of the road (less than 300m from our front door) where we get to go and look at the books as often as we want to. This is next door to the Church where our weekly toddler group is held. Across the road from there is a lovely playground which we make great use of, either on the swings or kicking the football around. 5-10 minutes walk in the opposite direction from our front door gets us here...
This is a lovely country park made up of three old mill lodges and a visitor's centre which puts on lots of activities in the school holidays. During half-time you could make your own broomstick, for example. It has lots and lots of ducks and Canada Geese and, as Bud's favourite thing in the world at the moment is our feathered friends (anything with wings is described as a duck and greeted with a chorus of 'wack, wack, wack' now) we are spending a lot of time there. It also has a well used, well equipped play park with a truly terrifying slide that Red Rose Daddy insists it is fine to let Bud slide down on his own.
(Scary slide, Mummy much more scared than Bud)
So, in order to fulfil my child's greatest wish at the moment we have a five minute walk. We can go everyday if we want to. It may not be the greatest area in the world but it is home, and we are lucky to have a lovely home with everything we need nearby and the opportunity to get outdoors to see wildlife (ducks!) and breathe fresh air whenever we want to.
(Gratuitous waterfowl shot to make Bud happy)
I am linking this post to the lovely Coombe Mill Blog's 'Country Kids' link-up, I know Bud loves being outdoors more than anything and I hope this will continue until he is fully grown!
