Holly 22

Fountains Abbey

Our trip today was about a 40 minute drive to an Abbey called Fountains Abbey and it was a beautiful sight.  The Abbey is very old and it was first built in the 1100's.  It is in a very big park.  At Fountains Abbey we went on a walking tour with a man called Mike.  He was very nice and loved to make everyone laugh.  The tour was fun and interesting.  Mike told us all about how the Abbey was started and what the monks who used to live there did.

In the gardens Mike showed us a swan's nest that still had an egg in it, but the other 3 eggs and hatched and looked about a couple of months old.

Mum, Dad, Aidan and I went into the mill where there was a big corn grinder that you could turn and make flour with.  You needed two people to do it.

 I learnt lots of things like how the monks eat and how they lived. There were two different types of monks. Some did lots of praying and some did the working on the farm.  They lived separately and had different parts of the abbey to go to and eat in. They also got different food.

The Great Yorkshire Show

The Great Yorkshire Show is an amazing place to go to near York because there are lots of thingsn to look at and do.  At the show there are lots of cows so it is more like beef week than a show.

We went to see all the cows in the shed and there were Belted Galloways and lots of other sorts of cows.  The cows were beautiful.

There was a display where a man had some gun dogs and they were all a bit silly.  He had a springer spaniel that wasn't trained yet so it jumped through the fence and into someone's lap.

there were lots of hounds and the handlers all wore red coats.

we got to look in some tanks and I had a go at shooting a real gun at a target.  I hit a dog tag hanging from the roof.

We saw a really, really, really, REALLY cool motor bike show and one of the motor bike riders was the actor that can play Captain America. The show was awesome because two of the med had small bikes and did backflips on them.

Last of all there were horse riders and they were very good.  There were some small ponies pulling carriages really fast and they had to go through obstacles.  There were also some huge shire horses pulling big carts and other horses doing jumping.

Aidan and I rode in a racing car simulator.  It went really fast and it was bumpy when it stopped for a pit stop to change the tyres.

Warwick Castle
We stayed in a lodge at a castle called Warwick Castle and it was sooooo cool because there were lots of activities like knights fighting.  There was a blue knight called Sir Paul and a red knight called Sir Lewis. They had 3 battles with their swords. They used different swords for each fight and in one fight the blue knight used a really big axe.  The blue knight won twice and the red knight won once.

We went all over the castle and climbed the really tall towers. There were more than 500 steps to go up and you could walk around the walls of the castle.

We went into the Princess tower and a lady told us a story about a princess and a shoe maker.  We had to help the Princess get the man free from the picture.

There was also a birds of prey show and the man flew all sorts of birds like owls, vultures, eagles, buzzards and kites.  It was an amazing show because the birds flew around the castle.  My favourite birds were the kites becaue they can catch food in mid air.

At night when we were staying in the lodge there was a jester school and that was a lot of fun. Our lodge was called a knights lodge and it had stuff in it that a knight might have had. Our coat of arms was an eagle.

At the jester school there are lots of fun things to do but my favourite thing at the castle was the trebuchet because it fired a fire ball.  To make the trebuchet work there are 2 big wooden wheels that look like water wheels.  In a battle they would have to make the trebuchet fire every six minutes.  The men walking in the wheels used to get dizzy and throw up.

The next day when we woke up it was my birthday.