After recently watching Cars 2, both Orla and Reuben want to be secret agents. So our recent visit to Tatton Park turned into a secret agent training camp.

Reuben came home from school last week and excitedly told us that they'd had a visit from Batman. We later discovered that it was a volunteer from the local bat conservation group rather than Bruce Wayne.

Shall I tell you a little secret? I’m sure that since you’re reading an outdoor blog, you already know it, but just in case you don’t, here goes… You can have a lot of fun in ‘bad weather’, or to be more precise, you can have a lot of fun in what other people call ‘bad weather’.

Yesterday we wanted to go hiking, but it was raining. Raining a lot. This in itself isn't a problem, but the hike we had planned would take a couple of hours, and the end point was a look out tower with views, which would be pretty pointless if the amazing views were shrouded in cloud.

The girls are on holiday this week, and today they wanted to visit 'Flower Island' (or Mainau Island as it is more officially known!). http://www.inselmainau.net/ This place is just fabulous.

The great explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” And he was right…

Growing your own vegetables is fun and is definitely worth a try. We’ve tried growing lots of different vegetables and found that some work better than others.

One of the best £3 we’ve ever spent was on a pocket kite. It’s a single-line design so it’s really easy for a small boy to fly on his own and it can be out of the bag and ready to go in a jiffy.

The trouble with having two biology teachers as parents is that Arlo gets roped into lesson planning on the weekends. Yesterday we went down to our local river to see what we could find in preparation for some fieldwork. Arlo got stuck in having mastered his skills in the rock pools of Cyprus a couple of weeks ago.

Today we decided to have lunch at the lake, and living in Switzerland means there are always plenty of lakes to choose from! We went to the place we normally camp at, although I did have to explain many (many) times that camping isn't open yet, so we would just be staying for the day.