Reasons to be Cheerful the end of year round-up! #R2BC

As its the last Reasons to be Cheerful for 2016 I thought I would do a round-up of some of the biggest things that have made me cheerful this year. I will be handing the baton back to Michelle for January so I hope you will all carry on in 2017.

1) Completing my first (and last?) half marathon

One of the toughest things I have ever done was back in May when I ran in the inaugural Brathay Half Marathon. My finish line photo sums up what it meant to all of us:

Who knows if I will ever run one again...

2) Single with Kids holidays

We had our most ever trips with Single with Kids this year. With them we camped in the Peak District, Stourport and Kettering. There was also a trip to Robin Hood's Bay for a self-catering break. All of these put smiles on our faces:

3) Fun with family and friends

We are so lucky to be able to have great adventures almost on our doorstep. Adventures we have enjoyed have included:

• Wray Castle and Claife
• Cruising on Windermere
• Camping in Dent
• A weekend in Bowness
• Waterhead and Galava
• The Lakeland Maize Maze
• The Hobbit in Williamson Park
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• A walk on Hadrian's Wall
• A visit to Lanercost Priory

4) Family & Friends

Of course my family and friends have put plenty of smiles on my face this year too! Here is hoping for plenty of fun times in 2017 together too.

#CountryKids Exploring Waterhead and Galava Roman Fort

A friend has come up to Keswick for the Convention so we arranged to meet at Ambleside today for lunch. The easiest place to do this was at Hayes Garden World where we had lunch on the terrace with Mr Tod for company:

We then parked up at Waterhead (lucky that it didn't take long to get spaces!) and the children wanted to paddle in Windermere:

Of course we hadn't come prepared so they just waded in and got their bottom halves wet:

#CountryKids Cruising on Windermere #CumbriaIsOpen

I was very lucky recently to win a prize during a weekend celebrating Cumbria and giving a much needed PR boost to our flooded county. Our prize was a Freedom of the Lake family pass with Windermere Cruises, we hadn't been on the steamers since 2013 so it was a big treat.. We were unable to use them on the original weekend as my daughter was in hospital so they kindly gave us a pass for any day this year. This meant we were able to use them during our Easter holidays.

The trip did not start in a promising fashion as when we got to Bowness the boats were not sailing due to the fog on the lake:

We decided to wait and hope that we would get our day out! There was time to see whether the children would have been underwater in the last two floods. Looks like my daughter would have had her head clear but her little brother would have been in deep water (hence the sad face!): 

In the end we didn't have to wait as long as we feared and were on board the Teal and ready to go: