Ruthie's visit to Ashby

We have a local market town called Ashby de la Zouch and we took Ruthie to see it. Its name is a bit French because it was once owned by a Norman Frenchman back in eleven hundred and something which was a long long time ago. They built a castle there and there's some bits of it left but we thought Ruthie might prefer to go shopping and have an English afternoon tea, so we did that instead.

There are lots of old buildings and the main street looks all old and rambly and there are historic old pubs and stuff. You can see the Bull's Head in this picture. It was built in Elizabethan times and you can just see the timber stuff on the front of it.

At the end of the shopping street there's a really tall pointy monument to an old lady of the manor. She was Countess of Loudoun and so it's called the Loudoun monument and it was built by a man called Gilbert Scott who also built St Pancras Station in London.

The building in the background is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes. It was designed by F.A. Walters and built in 1908-15 at the expense of the 15th Duke of Norfolk. We didn't go round it, but it's very impressive isn't it?

After we went shopping we went and had a cream tea with scones and jam and stuff. It's typical English so we had to let Ruthie try one.

Find out more about Ruthie here

Ruthie's here!

Do you remember that I said Ruthie was coming to stay with us?  Well she arrived last night, but Mummy had to go to work today and so we went to the office with her and took Ruthie along so that she wouldn't be at home on her own all day.

The first thing we had to do was sort out a coat for Ruthie because it has been raining really really hard here and Mummy said she might go soggy if she got wet and so we made her a rain poncho to help keep dry. We let Bamburgh do the styling because he's the one who's good at fashion and stuff (even though Dexter used to be a model in a shop, Bamburgh's the one with the design talent). We think that Ruthie looks good in her new coat, what do you think?

Well we got to the office and there wasn't much for us to do so we showed Ruthie round and I didn't know that Mummy has all these pictures of us next to her desk but she does. She says it makes the day go faster if she can look at us sometimes. I wondered where all my Moo cards went and now I know but  I don't mind because if it helps Mummy that's a good thing.

We were going to take Ruthie into town at dinner time to see Robin Hood but it was raining really really hard and even the coat that Bamburgh made wouldn't have kept her dry and so we stayed in and looked at the view but the car park isn't very interesting. There are students living in the house on the other side of the car park and their yard is really really messy so we tried not to get that in the photo. Maybe we should have because at least that's interesting.

There are lots of animals where mummy works because that's what she does, all about animals that get used in science labs and why they shouldn't be and we agree. We think it's horrid that people do nasty things to animals even if it's to make new drugs and things because animals aren't like people and so the tests are probably all wrong anyway.  So the office has lots of plush (which is why we like going there because there's always loads of people to talk to) and we introduced Ruthie to them and I think she liked meeting them because she had a big smile.

To use up some more time we played with the stuff on Mummy's desk and we got all tangled up in the paper clips and made long strings out of them and Mummy was a bit upset because she said she would have to undo them all again but we liked it because there were pretty coloured ones and stripy ones as well and Ruthie was good fun because she helped us to make the strings.

And we learned something today as well called ee-vole-oo-shun and it's all to do with where we come from and there was a big chart on the wall but it didn't have any dragons on it so I don't think it's quite right but Mummy says an important man called Darwin sorted it all out and he was good at it so it was right except he didn't know about dragons and so he just left us out.

Mummy says tomorrow is a day off so we can take Ruthie somewhere interesting but I quite enjoyed going to the office and I hope she didn't mind that it was raining and stuff.