Space City, Toulouse, France

Sometimes Mr B comes up with a good idea for somewhere interesting to visit. And Space City, or le Cité de l'Espace, was one such choice. Sitting in an unassuming suburb of Toulouse it's exactly what you wouldn't expect to find in such an old and historic city.

The first thing that catches your eye is the 53 metre high mock-up of an Ariane 5 rocket that's parked outside. In a low-build skyline you'd be really hard pressed to miss it.

Irish Blessings and Summer Driving ...

We're off to the sun-kissed lands of the South. Catalonia here we come!

And because our party includes the Wonder Dog we're off on a road trip (the Wonder Dog doesn't do aeroplanes). I love these madcap jaunts through France. There's nothing to beat driving on the wonderful French roads on a sunny day with the windows down, the breeze blowing in and the music cranked up as loud as it'll go. I know I've hit the mark when  Emi complains bitterly from the back seat about not being able to hear the Scooby-Doo movie on his headset.

I've got a Spotify drive-time playlist that will take me from Belfast to Barcelona and back again. There's the odd objection to some of my choices here and there, but for the most part it's a happy experience as we boogie on down the road.

There's a lovely old Irish blessing for occasions like this:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

And may the hand of a friend be ever near.

It's got many variations, but that one's my favourite.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Fossil forraging in Lyme Regis

Lyme Regis is a timeless sort of place. It's been here for over a millennium. The Saxons hung out and fished. It's been written up in the Doomsday Book.  Jane Austin came for the sea air, Mary Anning found her many fossils hereabouts and generations of would-be palaeontologists have followed in her footsteps.

In the summer it can get a bit chocker, but the beaches are plenty big enough to allow the masses to spread out and not tread on one another's toes.

My favourite bit of town is the East Cliff Beach which is at the end of the promenade. Carry on past the museum that's been built on the site of Mary Anning's old shop and family home. It extends north east towards Charmouth. In fact you can see the visitor centre at Charmouth and the oddly shaped cliff that sits on the other side of it in the distance.  Out here it feels sort of otherworldly. The colours are strong from the intense green of the abundant seaweed to the dead grey of the crumbling sea cliffs.

Lyme Regis, Dorset, Devon

Summer nights ...

Do you ever wish that summer would never end? I do. 

One of the many things I love about this season is how it never gets totally dark. The sky turns a dark, inky indigo, not the usual jet black from other times of the year. And you can go walking in the woods after twilight to listen to the creatures that come out after dark. Emi comes with me, but he's a bit scared of the dark. He likes to draw me into involved conversations. We talk about aliens and what kind of dinosaurs used to live in this part of Devon. In fact we talk about anything at all that will take his mind off his fear of the night. 

As the twilight darkens the bats come out and swoop around us. Sometimes we hear the big dog fox who lives in the orchard. On nights like tonight he enjoys a good bark at the moon. I think he needs to find himself a girlfriend, but that's a whole other story. And if we leave our nocturnal wanderings until really, really late we sometimes catch a glimpse of the barn owls. They appear like phantoms out of the night and they sound like nothing else in the world of the living ... . 

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Dino rampage at the Eden Project, Cornwall

Calling all dino fans - or perhaps, more accurately, calling the mums and dads of all dino fans! If you've got a child who's mad about the big prehistoric lizards I've got the perfect day out for you: down in Eden they've brought the dinos back from extinction, and they're running amok through the perfectly manicured flowerbeds. It's all a bit crazy ... but it's guaranteed to delight.

Emi has had one of his best chums down for a few days to stay with us in deepest, darkest Devon. Both boys are mad about dinos, so when I asked them what they'd like to do I got a list that had a predictably pre-historic theme to it: a trip to the Jurassic coast was mentioned, and so was the dino rampage down at Eden. Emi had picked up a leaflet about it in town, stored it away and then waited for the perfect opportunity to suggest it as a day-out.