Camping

We have been camping this week with another home edding family and despite the weather forecast had both wonderful weather and time.

Our trip got off to an auspicious start. We were to be joined by an old friend who was visiting from the far east, living so far away we do not see him that often, every two to three years. He and my husband sat up late into the night, in fact into the small hours, catching up and drinking whisky. The next day, nursing a hangover my husband was struggling to get out of bed. I got up, had breakfast, finished the last bits of packing, started to load the car, had lunch, he still had not got up. Finally at half past two I gave him an ultimatum I was going to leave by half three at the latest. He suggested sleeping some more and coming over later in a separate car, not a good idea I felt as he may be still over the limit for driving. In the end we did manage to leave at half three and arrived at the campsite just after five, better late than never I guess. I ended up putting most of the tent up myself and cooking tea, I fell into bed exhausted, hoping the next day would be better. At least the weather had been good, warm and sunny with no rain.

The next day dawned dry and warm, with some cloud. We were going to spend the day on a steam railway riding up and down. The campsite had its own stop on the line. It seemed to take ages to get ready, after the previous day I didn't feel I was firing on all cylinders. The railway was great fun as always, we had several trips up and down the line, and spent some time at one end exploring a museum of the history of the line and the village. The morning was dry but as the day wore on it got wetter and wetter. It did not spoil our enjoyment of the journey.

We were undecided about spending another night under canvas as the weather was forecast to get worse as the week went on. The day dawned bright and sunny, so we stayed and the warmth stayed with us all day. The children and their friends played and played and played on the campsite and were having such a good time that we did not make any plans. As the day wore on and it got hotter and hotter we walked to the nearest village for ice creams. We did not take any waterproofs with us and the rain came down, really hard, we sheltered under a tree, well the adults did the children ran around in the pouring rain! Whilst we were cooking tea the rain poured again and we had a thunderstorm which was exciting, well I thought so the children were not convinced. The rain came down so hard that it created huge pond like puddles on the campsite in various places, thankfully not near our tent. The children thought these looked great fun to play in so they stripped off and jumped in, spending abut half an hour running, jumping, splashing and falling into then. They fell into bed tired and happy.

I took plenty of clothes for the children, as the forecast has been for rain every day I was sure they would get wet. Luckily the very dry day ensured that most of the clothing and shoes that had got wet dried out, they did wear everything that I took at some point. It rained hard as we packed up and for the journey home, it cleared to allow us to unpack the car, but not long enough to start hanging stuff up to dry, that is for another day.