A mountaineer in the making?

I was going to entitle this post ‘Scaling new heights’ but then realised that I had already used this title for my last blog post – doh as one Homer Simpson might say. Anyway we are currently staycationing at Andy’s parents in Stockton and are using the opportunity to explore the local area. In all of the nearly 13 years Andy and I have been driving up the A19 past Roseberry Topping, on the way to his parents, we have always without exception said ‘we must walk up there one day’. Our excuses to date for not doing this have been along the lines of ‘it’s too cold’ (to be fair to us we usually travel up this way around Christmas time) and ‘we haven’t got enough time’. We could hardly use the temperature as an excuse, with the car thermometer soaring above 20 degrees and the time factor certainly didn’t apply, as we are here for a week. Now you could hardly blame us if we used the children as a reason not to scale Roseberry Topping this time. I mean what person in their right mind takes a 3 year old who is liable to whinge at the distance and difficulty and a 1 year old who must be close to 25lbs (this is only significant as he was going to make the ascent in the Daddy taxi), up a mountain (ok hill, but it is as good as a mountain to a 3 year old who is only 97cm tall!)? Anyway Andy had made the decision, which is a fairly rare occurrence in this household, and we were going despite my protestations of ‘it looks like rain’ and ‘what if Ava falls off the side?’.

So armed with one 3 year old and a hefty one year old snuggled in his rucksack (highly recommend Little Life), we made our ascent and rather surprisingly there were no groans from Ava about how long it was taking or that she wished to be carried. Only 50 minutes after arriving in the car park we were sitting on top of Roseberry Topping admiring the views of the Tees Valley and high fiving our achievement. Definitely an ‘I did it Mummy’ moment for one very pleased 3 year old. Does Mont Blanc, Everest or K2 beckon for her, we’ll see.