What I did on my holiday Part 1

Where we stayed.

We stayed at a place called Castlegate cottages which I thought was brilliant. We had Castle Cottage, aptly named for it was several yards away from Pickering Castle. Castlegate cottages are lovely stone built cottages with open fires (not tested - can you imagine little bear with a grate full of ashes?) and fully equipped kitchen - including a dishwasher. I had never used a dishwasher before, it was a voyage of discovery!

It was so beautiful inside, immaculately clean, lovely furnishings and the lovely lady had provided a portable stair gate to at least give me a chance with little bear.

The big snag was that there were only two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with twin beds. So dear heart and darling father shared the twin room while I shared the double with little bear.

I was so nervous about this. I have heard all about the benefits of co-sleeping, and little bear is not a baby, and co-sleeping is really the risk if you are sleeping very heavily indeed, but I did sleep quite lightly as I was terrified of rolling onto him.

Of course this never happened. However I did find my self waking up with his head or feet in my back as he had revolved 90 degrees, or trying to coax him back to sleep at 3am without waking anyone, and little bear always sleeps with a night light which made it a little harder to get to sleep.

Then there was the morning wake up call, usually obscenely early as little bear presented me with my slippers and insisted, 'down!'

So we would creep down into the living room (it was a lovely warm cottage) and I would give him his morning bottle (he is reluctant to part with this and I am not currently forcing the issue). We would get dressed downstairs and then little bear would want to play in the garden.

We have a small concrete yard facing onto an unmade road. Little bear was suddenly presented with a turfed area at least ten yards long and three yards wide and he raced up and down with far more enthusiasm than I could muster at 7.30am.

I am trying to contact the owner so we can go there again next year.