Our Easter Holiday at Home

I don't really like the word 'staycation'. According to Merriam-Webster the word dates back to the 1940's but I'm sure it always used to mean a holiday spent at home. Nowdays it seems like far too many people, the media, politicians, etc use it as a catch-all for simply having a holiday in the UK. Even the various dictionaries online, Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, all have one definition as holidaying in your own country. Surely if you're leaving your home to go on holiday, regardless of the destination, whether it's Greece or Grimsby, it's still *an actual holiday*. Not a staycation. I don't know, perhaps I'm just remembering wrong. 

Anyway we actually did have a traditional 'staycation' over the Easter holidays - or a 'holiday at home' which I think is a much nicer phrase. 

Normally we'd be in Wales over Easter at a place we've visited every year since 1987. I was only 4 when we first went and the owners of the site we stay at have seen me and my brother grow up, right through to the next generation - Lily- coming along on holiday too. We stay in 2 holiday cottages now though rather than share one with my parents. 

Last year it just felt a bit strange staying home. We weren't yet a month into the first lockdown and we had great weather so just played outside and rebuilt the garden and veg patch. This year for Easter, with the 'stay at home' restrictions lifted, we were able to have some day trips. And although the guidance says 'minimise travel' there's nothing in England's COVID legislation restricting (domestic) travel so we were free to travel wherever we liked for whatever reason, provided we didn't break the 'gathering' bit of the legislation (as an aside, if you're on Twitter, Adam Wagner is an excellent person to follow, he's a human rights barrister who's been keeping track of the changes to COVID legislation since March 2020 (I think over 70 changes so far). He's also brilliant at answering people's questions about law and guidance and explains things in a really easy-to-understand way).

For our holiday at home, we ended up with rather good weather for the whole week really, a bit cold perhaps but at least it wasn't raining. 

We did day trips to:

- Clevedon and Portishead, doing a 2.5 mile walk around the woods in Portishead finishing off with a playground, ice cream and fish & chips.

- the New Forest to see the ponies and tall trees and Southampton to see the huge cruise ships (of course we found a playground there too).

- Teignmouth to meet Andrew's sister, doing a 2.5 mile history walk around the town centre and harbour. We had ice cream, strolled along the prom, visited the playground and had fish & chips for dinner. 

And took picnics:

- to Chew Valley Lake to see the ducks and buy an ice cream. 

- on a 5 mile walk around the local area, crossing fields, going through woods and finding secret footpaths. 

- to Westbury White Horse to see the grandparents where we had ice cream, found geocaches and did a 3.5 mile walk around the hill fort. 

- to Burnham on Sea beach for sandcastle-building and more chips!

- on a 4 mile walk around the local area, following the old railway lines around the area. 

We also had a family Easter lunch outside in the sun complete with Easter egg hunt and a (rather chilly) picnic in the garden later in the week. 

I've written on here before about geocaching (back in 2017); it's quite an interesting and fun thing to do, especially when you're out and about in different places. We found quite a few geocaches while we were out on our day trips. 

I also found an app called ViewRanger which lets you plan walks and see walks other people have created. I'm sure it's one everyone already knows about and I'm late to the party but still, it's quite good. I think the app's possibly going to be retired at some point in the future but it seems to work well at the moment. We used some trails other people had created and also made some of our own. The trail we did in Teignmouth was rather good as it was created by the Royal Geographical Society and had lots of information about the history of the town that you could read or listen to as you followed the route. Anyway, it's an app I'd recommend. 

What did you get up to at Easter?