The Summer Holiday Activities for Families in the UK

    While the Astronaut spacewalk, Manchester last year remains in the memory of some families, our week-by-week guide to the school summer break this year features a host of special events and outdoor fun for kids, from open-air cinema and live music to coming face to face with dinosaurs.

    Polar fun, Edinburgh

    Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh is keeping cool this summer with lots of polar-themed activities, including family science shows on the Arctic and Antarctic, icy experiments, and craft designs where kids can make their own penguin, walrus or polar bear.

    Until 28 August, £15 adults, £9.50 children, dynamicearth.co.uk.

    Dinosaur events, various locations

    Dinosaurs in the Wild is a vivid, walk-through experience taking visitors back 67 million years to the late Cretaceous period. Dinosaur Babies is an exhibition of dinosaur embryos and eggs, plus a model nest. Dinosaurs of China displays fossils and skeletons never before seen in Europe.

    Until 23 August, NEC in Birmingham, then 7 October to 7 January, Event City Manchester, £29.50 adults, £26 children, dinosaursinthewild.com.

    Proud Country House kids fest, Brighton

    Just 15 minutes from the centre of Brighton, this 18th century Georgian manor house in Stammer Park has a packed programme of events and activities on throughout the summer, including storytelling in the forest, guided bike rides, tree climbing and family yoga.

    1 July〜10 September, prices vary, usually from £5〜10, booking for events required but bouse and gardens can be visited without booking, stammerhouse.co.UK /kids fest.

    Cold weather can be hard on pets, just like it can be hard on people. Sometimes owners forget that their cats are just as used to the warm shelter (住所) as they are. Some owners will leave their animals outside for a long period of time, thinking that all animals are used to living outdoors. This can put their pets in danger of serious illness. There are things you can do to keep your animal warm and safe.

    Keep your pets inside as much as you can when the weather is bad. If you have to take them out, stay outside with them. When you're cold enough to go inside, they probably are too. If you must leave them outside for a long time, make sure they have a warm, solid shelter against the wind, thick bedding, and plenty of non-frozen water.

    If left alone outside, dogs and cats can be very smart in their search for warm shelter. They can dig into snow banks or hide somewhere. Watch them closely when they are left outdoors, and provide them with shelter of good quality. Keep an eye on your pet's water. Sometimes owners don't realize that a water bowl has frozen and their pet can't get anything to drink. Animals that don't have clean and unfrozen water may drink dirty water outside, which may contain something unhealthy for them.

    Devon Gallagher, a college graduate from Philadelphia, wants the world to know exactly where she's been while she's on her worldwide vacation in a special way. The traveler, who was born with a bone disease, had her right leg amputated (截肢) at the age of four. Although the amputation caused inconvenience for Gallagher early on, she now sees it as nothing short of inspiration for living her best life.

    To spread that message. Gallagher has gone to social media, where she shares photos of her travels across the world, but instead of simply using a geo-tag (地理位置标签), she writes her location on her artificial leg before taking a picture.

    Now she has been taking pictures across the Continent, which show her cycling over the canal in Amsterdam relaxing on a wall overlooking the city of Barcelona, posing with a waffle in Brussels, taking in the beautiful Parthenon temple in Athens and enjoying a river ride in Budapest, all with the well-known locations written on her artificial leg.

    "I get a new leg every two years and I can choose the design on it. One day I had a sudden thought to get a chalk-board," Gallagher said. "My mum and grandmother didn't like the idea, but my friends thought it was great and told me to go for it, so I did."

    Gallagher said people often stare when she's writing on her leg, but once she shares the photos, she receives only positive feedback (反馈), "My leg hasn't stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to do," she said. "I don't know if it's my determination to prove to myself that I can do it, anyway, I've been able to keep up with people at my age and lead a pretty great life."

    Gallagher shows us that you should never let anything stand in the way of your dreams. And if life gives you an artificial leg, make art.

    Auctions(拍卖行) are everywhere. Here are just a few standouts and some of the areas they specialize in. All have brick-and-mortar(实体的) sales rooms in addition to online buying.

    Leslie Hindman Auctioneers

    Headquarters(总部): Chicago

    Founded: 1982

    Best bets: contemporary art, jewelry

    The founder, Leslie Hindman, has been on an expansion kick from her Chicago base and now runs eight offices across the country. Ms. Hindman said that plenty of items sell at her house for around $500. As in the auction world generally, jewelry and contemporary art receive lots of attention from bidders(出价者), and in2017 a diamond ring sold for $97,000.

    Swann Auction Galleries

    Headquarters: New York

    Founded: 1941

    Best bets: books, works on paper, African-American art

    Founded as a rare-book auctioneer, Swann still holds dozens of such sales a year. The president, Nicholas D. Lowry, noted that Swann was the first auction house to sell old photographs, in 1952.The house has also had a department of African-American art for 12 years.

    Stair Galleries

    Headquarters: Hudson, N.Y.

    Founded: 2001

    Best bets: English and Continental furniture and paintings, modern and contemporary art

    Colin Stair, the founder and president, comes from a long line of antiques dealers (商人). Stair is frequented by dealers and bargain hunters, and it's a place to find interesting things like a George I carved walnut wing armchair, coming up as part of a sale on April 28 and 29.

    Heritage Auctions

    Headquarters: Dallas

    Founded: 1983

    Best bets: coins, sports memorabilia, movie posters

    With roots in coin auctions, Heritage has grown quite large. But their bread and butter are items that the company president, Greg Rohan, calls "the kinds of things that everyone has." "People aren't buying what were selling for decoration or for resale," he added. "They're buying things they absolutely love."

    More and more travellers in China nowadays prefer homestays rather than traditional hotels, as they seek private living experiences. The house-sharing model was first introduced by the website Couchsurfing, com in 2003. It is still the largest website for travellers to find accommodation(住宿) without much money to spend.

    Encouraged by her great experience of homestays in France, Maggita, 30, considered short-term hire as her first choice in her future trips. She later went back to her hometown Shanghai and ran a "shared accommodation" business.

    The short-term hire idea has been a win-win business model. For travellers, they can rent a special room at a reasonable price and also enjoy a firsthand experience of the local culture, compared with traditional hotels. For owners, they can gain much with daily rental. Now Maggita has quit her last job in an IT company and become a host of some 20 homestays, which enables her to earn a monthly income of around 40,000 —50,000 yuan.

    In recent years, China has seen many homestay booking websites such as Xiaozhu and Tujia. Chen Chi, the founder and CEO of Xiaozhu, said the model is to share rooms or apartments that are not in use with people who need them. Instead of the traditional view that Chinese people feel uncomfortable living with strangers, Chen found that a large number of travellers got along well with house owners.

    However, experts have pointed out a series of problems brought about by the fashion. Lacking supervision(监管) to those accommodation sharing websites, the service quality and accommodation safety cannot be guaranteed(保障).Experts suggest that the online websites should closely work together with communities and local police stations to improve the services.

Climbing, I once thought, was a very manly activity, but as I found my way into this activity, I came to see that something quite different happens on the rock.

Like wild swimming, rock climbing involves you into the landscape. On the rock, I am fully focused. Eyes pay close attention, ears are alert, and hands move across the surface. Unlike walking, where I could happily wander about absent-mindedly, in climbing, attentive observation is essential.

As an arts student studying English literature, I discovered a new type of reading from outdoor climbing. Going out on to the crags (悬崖), I saw how you could learn to read the rocks and develop a vocabulary of physical movements. Good climbers knew how to adjust their bodies on to the stone. Watching them, I wanted to possess that skillful "language".

My progress happened when I worked for the Caingorms National Park Authority.Guiding my explorations into this strange new landscape was Nan Shepherd, a lady too. Unlike the goal-directed mindset of many mountaineers, she is not concerned with peaks or personal achievement. Shepherd sees the mountain as a total environment and she celebrates the Caingorms as a place alive with plants, rocks, animals and elements. Through her generous spirit and my own curiosity, I saw that rock climbing need not be a process of testing oneself against anything. Rather, the intensity of focus could develop a person into another way of being.

Spending so much time in high and st ony places has transformed my view on the world and our place in it. I have come into physical contact with processes that go way beyond the everyday. Working with gravity, geology (地质学), rhythms of weather and deep time, I gain an actual relationship with the earth. This bond lies at the heart of my passion for rock climbing. I return to the rocks, because this is where I feel in contact with our land.