A Perfect Piratey Day

It's 10.30pm and The kids are finally in bed and asleep on our final night of our epic road trip.

We are in very comfortable surroundings this evening in a deluxe room at Thornbury castle near Bristol.

Our room is very grand and spacious with a four poster bed. We have walls of stone, a wall covered in a tapestry, a wood panelled wall, and a wall covered in heraldic style wall paper. And we actually have reliable wifi at last - hurrah!

The castle grounds are stunning too with an old Tudor garden and lots of archways, gates and secret doorways. It would make a beautiful wedding venue with the backdrop of the castle and all the lovely gardens around it.

We arrived just in time to catch the last of the evening light to have a quick look around the grounds.

We'd stopped en-route to Thornbury around the half way mark to meet up with a family who, although we have only met them face-to-face once before, have become really special friends.

Since our fabulous weekend with them at Center Parcs last year, we had been trying to meet up again but life is so busy and the distance between where we live gets in the way so it just hadn't happened until now.

We met for a really lovely lunch at Cherry's Woodland cafe, and then spent a couple of hours together at a nearby park.

The Beesley boys and the Pirate boys reunited again!

Seth showed us his favourite climbing tree and his climbing skills. I was in awe of how well he climbed as I remembered all too well when Pauly had written about him learning to climb and how he had overcome challenges to do so. Seth is just an amazing kid, so great to be around and we were so pleased to see him again.

Opeie is still just as adorable as we remembered him to be.

Trinity made a new friend taking a real shine to Laura who gave her piggy back rides and plaited her hair beautifully. So much so that D asked Miss T, 'have you got a new mum?'

The kids ate ice creams, climbed trees, and played games in the park and I just wish we could have spent more time together.

You know you have good friends when it feels like you saw each other just yesterday and not nearly a year ago. When you can chat together about anything and everything. When time flies by all too quickly and you feel you could spend so much more time together.

We really hope we will get to see them again soon. They gave us a thoughtful gift which we think is totally awesome...it is a clear bauble with LEGO minifigure characters in it which had been specially chosen to each represent each member of our family. And they had made it themselves for us. Thank you so much pirates - you looked after us so well and we had an amazing day and can't wait to meet up with you again!

Then it was onto Thornbury. We feel really fortunate to have this final day of our road trip at Thornbury Castle. LateRooms.com had originally tried to book the ultra-amazing Carr castle for our last night, but the dates clashed with the venue being needed for a wedding, which quite understandably, got priority.

LateRooms.com really wanted us to have a castle experience and so suggested Thornbury castle as an alternative. They even made special arrangements to allow us to stay here as there is usually a minimum age of 10 years old for children to stay. It is a sister hotel to the fabulous Fowey Hall which we adored so we knew we would get a warm welcome here.

Children were not permitted to dine in the restaurant either but as we had a huge lunch with the pirates none of us needed a proper dinner so the kids just snacked on some fruit and cereal which we had leftover.

So it's home tomorrow as this is the last of our overnight stays but the excitement isn't over just yet as we have one more special event happening tomorrow evening before we head home.

Written up on Sunday 31st August 2014 in Bristol. This stay was day 13 of our Laterooms.com #52Sleeps roadtrip. Find out more here.