I wouldn’t say the sun never shines in Manchester, on the contrary, it’s often really quite beautiful weather. But we don’t often get that rare combination of factors which allows us a full family day together.

Today we’ve had a busy day, we’ve managed to squeeze an awful lot of outdoorsy activity into a relatively short time, and managed to feel like we’ve had a nice relaxing day. It’s a modern miracle!

We packed a picnic and headed off to one of our local and more child friendly National Trust properties, Dunham Massey. We had a little walk, the small boy did some scooting on his scooter and we kicked a ball around. The sun was blistering, so we sought some shade, rolled out the picnic blanket and had our lunch.

As we did so, some of the deer walked nearby and stopped to munch the grass and soak up some sun. We couldn’t resist edging closer to them to take some pictures. I really didn’t expect to get too close to them, I was at most two metres away from them at one point, but they didn’t even flinch. It was quite amazing.

The sun was getting a bit too harsh, so we decided to go home and get the paddling pool out, which we did. We spent a happy few hours under the shade of a parasol, splishing and splashing in the pool. The water was ice cold, but it was exactly what we needed.

Later we invited my Dad round and sparked up the BBQ. We sat in the evening sunshine drinking homemade cordial and soda water and just nattering, it was effortlessly relaxed. We all ate and ate well and watched as the sky darkened and the heavy clouds gathered. We dashed inside moments before the rain came. And just like that, our glorious outdoorsy day was over.