Family roots in Leeds

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Today we tidied up and moved on to Mel's other uncle and aunt in Leeds. We broke the journey with a stop at Cannon Hall near Wakefield. With a pretty good playground and large parkland style gardens, it is the old estate of the Spencer family who controlled the region for about 400 years through their steel and mining businesses. The hall was donated to the National Trust in the 1950’s and has been turned into a public estate and museum which shows the life of the family during their prime. On the grounds are a small petting farm and adventure playground but they Em was not in the mood so we wandered back to the café for lunch. We went back to the pond and fed the Canada geese. They have a daycare group of goslings – all the young in one group being minded by two or three adults while the rest of the group does whatever geese do. There were a few ordinary geese too but they were a bit hostile.

After running out of bread, we left and went to meet up with the family. We just had a street name so after a couple of false starts we got the right place. It took Em about an hour to start calling her great uncle “Granddad” (he is granddad’s brother) and she had another set of new toys to play with so we all settled in just fine!

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