Sam and I had a great day today. Emma was invited to an all day party so we took the opportunity to head to Greenwich on a book hunt.   Two trains and a bus later and we arrived at Greenwich station.  With our map in hand we started to spot the amazing book seats that have sprung up over London this year.  Sponsored by “The National Literacy Trust” and “Wild in Art” the benches are for public to enjoy and as an opportunity “to explore the capital’s literary connections, to enjoy art from some of the country’s top artists and to celebrate reading for enjoyment” (www.booksabouttown.org.uk).  There are 50 benches in total but we were just looking for the 12 based in Greenwich.

Our day didn’t start that well when we got off the bus and realised we’d left my poor blue-eyed boy’s sunglasses in the cafe in Twickenham.  Luckily my head is small and my glasses fitted him so it was just me squinting for the day. All and all Sam was such a trooper.  I worked out we walked approx 3.1 miles over the day, which is a long way for his legs.  He did so with minimal complaining and definitely did not want miss any out even after a couple of suggestions from me when he was really flagging.

I made a map showing the route we took, but not all the distances are on it.  Sam also took great pride in tracing the route on the map and numbering each bench as we found it.

Sam’s map marking our trail and the order we saw each bench

Benches 1- 7

1.  The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, 2. Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, 3. On the Origin of Species, 4. We’re going on a bear hunt, 5. The Time machine, 6. The Jungle book, 7. Elmer the Elephant

High lights of this set were

• Number 4, a was a very long way but definitely one of my favourites – ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ – to entertain Sam I kept singing ‘We’re going on a chair hunt’…he got sick of that before me!
• Sam was interested in the ‘Time machine’ particularly in that the time was set for 25th Dec 7034
• Elmer the elephant – we have this book at home although the kids hadn’t seen it so was lovely to introduce it tonight.

Sam really loves numbers and time so he was very impressed with Greenwich’s 24 hour clock.  Greenwich observatory is on a really high hill and he enjoyed looking out over ‘the town’. We spotted a building near where Daddy worked too.

We had a break after ‘Bench number 7’ for ice-cream and a playground.  Sam spotted some peddle boats and was keen to have a go.  His legs just reached the pedals. We paddled ourselves around for 15 mins or so.  He was pretty good at steering as well.

Benches 8 – 12

8. Captain Scott’s Autobiography, 9. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Girl Engrossed) , 10. Samuel Pepys’ Diary , 11. The Railway Children, 12. The Canterbury Tales

We ended our day with a river trip from Greenwich back to Waterloo station – both very tired bunnies!  Seriously easy travelling with only 1 child too.  To top it all off Sam’s sunglasses had been handed in at the cafe in Twickenham station so we were reunited with those too!

Of course we missed Emma and were glad when she got home at 6:30pm having had a very big day herself. So proud of my little girl coping for a whole day out with another family and had excellent reports on her behaviour which of course I expected nothing less.