Day one
This September five service users and three staff went on holiday to the Lake district for 6 nights. We left around 11am on the Monday morning with everyone being in high spirits and looking forward to the week ahead, The drive to where we were staying, which was a lovely farm house just outside Kendal was 3 hours long, we stopped off for lunch at some services on the way down before continuing our journey, we arrived at our holiday home where we were surprised to find that we had some friends in our garden (around 100 cows).
We decided to have a relaxing night watching movies, listening to music and chatting, we even enjoyed some coke floats.
Day two
On our first full day we visited “The world of Beatrix Potter” who created the much-loved children’s books “Peter Rabbit”. Here we got to learn lots about the life of Beatrix Potter and seen many different displays related to Peter Rabbit and his friends. We then went for lunch and in the afternoon, we visited a nearby aquarium where we got to witness a variety of different sea creatures from around the world. Outside the aquarium was an old steam train, although we did not get to ride on the train due to lack of time, many service users enjoyed taking pictures and watching it leave the platform.
Day three
Today was the day that we visited the Lakes Safari Zoo, we spent the morning looking around here and seen lots of different animals such as giraffes, lions, monkeys and many more. We also got to see a variety of different birds and even got to feed some. After a long morning of walking about and exploring we had a relaxing afternoon visiting the town of Kendal where we went for a short stroll, for a coffee and bought some of the world famous ‘Kendal mint cake’ to try.
Day four
Blackpool was only a 50-minute drive from where we were staying so we decided to have a day trip there, a few of the service users had went on holidays there in the past and were eager to see what it was like now. We spent the day playing arcade games in a huge arcade called coral Island, which was loads of fun. We then found a nice spot to eat our packed lunches before taking a tram along to the other side of the promenade to visit the museum ‘Ripley’s believe it or not’. Here we learned about lots of very interesting people. We also went for a walk along the promenade and to a rock shop to buy some Blackpool rock. To finish our day we went out for a nice meal and a drive along the promenade at night to see the Blackpool illuminations.
Day five
In the morning we went for a look around the lakes motor museum, here we seen many different types of vehicles from many different time periods, which was very interesting. In the afternoon we went for a lovely boat trip on lake Windemere. We seen loads of lovely views and heard many stories about lake Windemere’s past from the boat driver and went for a couple of drinks at a local pub. On the way home, we picked up a Chinese, so we could have a relaxing evening in the house.
Day six
After having a very busy week we decided to have a very relaxing day for our last day. We had a long lie and spent the morning/ early afternoon watching movies. In the afternoon we took a little trip out to Morecambe for a coffee. One of our service users used to live in Morecambe when she was young with her parents so was very keen to show everyone about. We even went to see her old house.
Day seven
We left around 10am to head back home, this time we just went straight home without any stops as we were all very tired, we arrived back home around 1. Everyone said they had a lovely time and couldn’t wait for the next holiday.
