Disastrous Dockyard Day (DDD)

On Wednesday we went to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, we have a ticket that gives us a year long pass to the events and attractions.  This particular Wednesday they had an arts and crafts session that lasted from 2-4pm.  We took the kids there and left to look around the Dockyard / enjoy some child free time.  We went back at 3.45 to find the room closed and no sign of the kids...

We went into the museum next door as we know they have a kids area inside for very young children, we thought maybe they had gone in there for some reason.  Two guards stopped us from entering the museum and demanded to see our ticket, we explained that our kids were missing and we were trying to find them. I found the ticket in my bag and one of the guards knocked on the adjoining door to the crafts area.
A woman came out and the guard explained we were looking for our children, the lady said "What the boy and girl?!" we replied yes and she went on to explain that the session ended and they told them to leave, she went on to say that parents shouldn't leave their children unsupervised.  Well this wasn't explained to us before hand, granted we know its not a baby sitting service but its a arts and craft session for children aged 4-12, our kids are 10 and 6 so i don't think they need us to sit with them.  We also found out the session seemed to have ended not at 4  as advertised but 3/4's of an hour earlier at 3:15.

So we are left then not knowing where the hell our kids are - they've been let out to walk around the dockyard by themselves, yes leaving them in a adult supervised art session without parental supervision is one thing but being told to leave and allowed to walk around the dockyard by themselves where there are countless places they could have gone is something else.  Now Darcie has Autism and will take any opportunity to slip into the role of the "Adult", she was already convinced we were going to the cinema while they were in there. So our first fear was that she had marched her and Harvey down to Gun Wharf to find us.  There are a couple of roads and a bus and train station between the Dockyard and Gun Wharf, so any number of things could have happened between them leaving the Dockyard and getting to Gun Wharf, she has no road sense and her sense of danger is different to other people - see a fly or cat and she will run screaming walk out in front of a car and she wont think anything will happen.

We then went looking around for them! Outside the museum are two benched, most normal people would just wait there but not Darcie. We walked down towards the gate where two armed policemen stand and out from one of the side bits Darcie and Harvey walk smiling away.  Thankfully they hadn't gone to far, but it was far enough.  She didn't seem to understand what she had done was wrong, but that doesn't surprise me :D

The lesson learned there is don't try and have a break it will only backfire on you!!