In 2017, two things happened that very drastically altered my life. One is rather obvious, cute, noisy and gets me up before the sun rises. The other was this - we got a car.

My weekly life hasn't changed too much, I can't drive so still spend a lot of time walking with Harry or hopping on trains. But at weekends, we have freedom to go further afield without being subjected to public transport and Crossrail closures. It's wonderful! We've explored more in our local area in the last year than we have in the 6 years we've lived together in Essex. It probably helps that our days start a lot earlier than the pre-baby lazy weekends used to... and taking Harry on outings is plain good fun.

He recently developed an interest in trains - we can see the mainline from our balcony, and he gets so excited whenever I take him on a train, we have to wave bye to the driver and he chats to everyone who looks in our direction. So for the last Sunday in September, we chose to indulge this interest and took him to the Epping & Ongar heritage railway.

As my interest in trains is limited to "will it get me home on time, and will I get a seat?" I wasn't expecting to enjoy myself as much as I did - but there is something undeniably charming about seeing a steam train come puffing into the platform, and Harry's little exclamations of "oh wow!" were enough to make my day.

The railway is run solely by volunteers, and an all-day ticket is around £14 (little ones like Harry go free). The line goes from Epping to Chipping Ongar in Essex, but we were restricted by Harry's nap schedule so only went as far as the first stop on the line in North Weald. After a short walk to explore our surroundings, we got a snack in the restored railcar cafe nearby before heading back to Chipping Ongar. I imagine it would be even more fun in summer, as you can wander through the countryside nearby, but we were inadequately dressed so felt a bit too cold for a longer walk!

They do a lot of themed days, for Halloween, Christmas, etc - so we might return for a visit to see Santa! Next time I think we'd make it a full day out with a pub lunch in between. It was nice pretending we'd been flung back in time for the day, and I obviously loved the Hogwarts Express vibes....