Fun, Fit and Fruity

My daughter’s school will hold a Fun, Fit and Fruity Week next week, but when reading through the activities this involves, it doesn’t sound that fun (park run before school hours when my children are still in bed!) or either healthy (salads yes, but muffins and pizza?). Ok, I agree, probably it’s fun for the kids, but definitely not for me. Especially the cookery competition that involves baking. She’s expected to bake muffins for judging, enough for 12 children, which means I’d end up doing it on Sunday night (as Monday is the deadline), competing with the other mothers, extraordinary bakers who love doing it, failing so my seven-year-old with my poor attempts. Not everyone is made (and has a love) for baking and I’m very sorry that my daughter has to learn it the hard way… Although what time do they close M&S on Sunday? Or open it on Monday morning so I would still have enough time to remove the packaging and use my own containers?

Apart from this all not sounding such fun, I still do like the idea of that coming week (so controversial of me!) and how for one day they’ve been encouraged to go to school on their scooters and another on their bikes to ride around at lunch time. It does remind me of how I never had my own bike when I was a kid. When finally one was handed down by my older brothers it got stolen on the first day. This didn’t mean I never rode a bike again in my life, because my friends were happy to share theirs or I tried out my brother’s big bike, but I guess I never became really strong and confident cycler, but it didn’t stop me feeling less confident in my skills as I was able to go for a long bike ride with my class and even organise a cycling and camping trip with my friends. Most of the friends didn’t turn up on that day, but the core friends were there and despite of the rainy start our plan was to ride to the seaside, which was about 60 km away, to stay overnight in a tent and then come back. One of us had to be back at the wedding in a few days so we were on a tight schedule.

I must admit it was a hard going and although everyone says (including myself) how flat Estonia is and how perfect for cycling, I ended up walking up the hill, pushing my bike. I could blame the bike that I had borrowed, because it wasn’t the easiest one and not the most appropriate for these roads, but at the same time I was quite lucky not to get a flat tyre like one of us did. We didn’t make it to the seaside on the first day (which wasn’t really our aim) but stopped off in a little town on the way, because I’d convinced everyone that there’s a camp site and we can set our tent up and get some rest. When we arrived at the town we saw that it wasn’t a camp site after all, these were just people’s summerhouses in the woods. Oops!

It was raining and getting dark, and we didn’t know if anyone was staying in their summerhouses, because although it was summer, you wouldn’t necessarily use it all season along. We started knocking on people’s doors and eventually luckily for us someone was kind enough to allow us to stay outside on the porch of their empty house. Although our tent was small, because we had to be very considerate how much to carry on our bikes, it was still a bit too big for the porch, but in the end it didn’t matter – we were happy, relatively dry, had a drink that made us feel warm, played cards into late and then slept our feet hanging over the edge.

And additionally in conclusion of our bike trip, we did make it to the seaside, but as it turned out to be so wonderful – just relaxing, swimming, sitting by our own-made fire, sleeping outside, we wanted to stay longer. And suddenly an opportunity of a lifetime arose and we managed to send our bikes back to our hometown in someone’s van, then stayed another night and hitchhiked back home a day later, saving us some valuable time (and painful legs).