As you know our kids are enrolled in school here.  Hannah’s school is just over a mile away and Kate has to walk an additional ½ mile.  So each morning we set off on our walk to school about 30 minutes before Hannah has to be in class and 40 minutes before Kate has to be there.  We leave at 8:10 and I get back to the flat about 9:15 after walking about 3 miles.  I often do the same thing in the afternoon so I get about 6 miles of walking each day.  In addition, before Sarah hurt her back, we were running each morning for about 30 minutes.  The issue for all of us isn’t really the walk, it is the hills.  We do not live in a flat area of the country.  The Moor Hill, just to the west of us is very steep and long on the way to the schools, and shorter but steeper on the way back home.  

We thought about the bus a couple of times but the route no longer goes past Kate’s school and the one day we took the bus home we had to wait for it for 20 minutes.  This morning I made it back to Lindley at about the same time as the bus I could have taken from Salendine Nook.

So…. we are all enjoying walking to and from the schools and I think I have devised a way to continue it when we get back to the states.  We’ll see.

Also, getting into Huddersfield ( 2-miles away) is very easy on the bus.  The busses to “town center” come right around the corner from us every 10 minutes so getting into the main shopping district is very easy.  Huddersfield University and cornet soloist Philip McCann are down town too.  In addition we have just received a name of a violin teacher at the university for the girls.  

Finally, cars here are mostly very small.  To put it in perspective a Mini Cooper is a rather normal sized car here and isn’t really considered small.  For a small car you really have to have a Ford “Ka” (a 2-door hatchback that looks about ½ the length of Amy’s Civic hatchback) or a “Smart Car for 2”.  I recently saw a Smart Car Roadster.  Check it out on their website.  You can’t get it in the states but it is very cool.  They just did a huge crash test for small cars including the Smart Car.  The Smart Car won hands down.  Very safe due to great airbags and an amazing steel cage for protection.

Cheers,
B-