One word? When seven would do…

Thursday morning after breakfast with J&J, some time for the children to continue a game they’d been playing on the computer and continued chatting we left for Wicksteed. The past two years we’ve arrived late, getting on for dark on the Thursday – infact last year we arrived so late we ended up begging a pod in Chris & Helen’s tent, so it was a real novelty to arrive at a sensible time. With the exception of a caravan we had the entire field to ourselves, which in some ways made it trickier to decide on a pitch. We went for next to the hedge in a slight dip in the hope it would be sheltered from the wind. LovelyEm arrived while we were still pondering and we set up in the newly arrived wind and rain shower 🙁 . Once we were set up I felt happier and we headed off to Tescos for supplies for dinner and some more tent pegs and a hot water bottle which I had decided was needed to keep my ankle / foot from the 5am aching in the cold that had been waking me every night.

Back at the campsite Helen and Chris, Chris and Babs and Kirsty and James arrived, various wind related tent casualties occured and by about 1030pm despite being with much adored friends the wind and rain were getting to me so I took painkillers and retired to bed, falling asleep long before Davies and Scarlett who were still chatting in their pod. I woke when Ady got into bed around 1am having been making tent repairs which he rather annoyingly wanted to share details of with me which roused me fully and I then lay awake in pain for a while 🙁 Just as well I’d had that early night…

Friday was Wicksteed day. We were all up bright and early and wondering whether the rollercoaster would be running due to the wind. It wasn’t 🙁 . I think the wind was better than last year’s very heavy rain though. Babs did some complicated maths and worked out we’d save money by going in as a group but when they wanted us to go to a different ticket office and were not sure if we’d be able to use Tesco vouchers anyway we decided to stick to going in individually.

It was a slightly odd feeling being there as for the first time the kids, particularly Davies would really rather have been going round with his friends instead of his parents. Retrospectively we should have not bothered with wrist bands for Ady and I, left them to it and hung out at the tent instead or maybe even gotten there early enough to do the rides as a family the day before and then sent the kids off with mates on the Friday.

Fortunately the mates they most wanted to hang around with were Marcus and Alex so we were able to hook up with Kirsty and James for much of the time and go around with them. The plusses of bigger kids are definitely tinged with a slight feeling of redundancy …I guess it’s been that much more intense a needing as HEors with needing to physically be around so much more.

Anyway, we all had a good time, I’d dosed up on codine, used my support bandage and worn my DMs so my ankle was numb and supported but I was careful with the rides I did go on to avoid too much bracing with my feet (so the crazy boat slide ride was out) or general stress on it (ditto the cycling helicopter). Did a couple of pirate ship rides and umbrella rides and log flumes though and mourned the rollercoaster remaining closed all day.
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Ady had checked the times of the circus and been told 1pm and 3pm so we had passed that information around and arranged to do the 1pm show then head back to the tents for lunch. When we arrived at the Big Top just before 1pm though it said ‘next show 2pm’ so something had gone wrong. I sent out a group text to try and let everyone else know and we headed back to the tent for lunch first instead.

The circus was pretty good (included in the wristband price) although one girl seemed to be in pretty much every act and there were a rather large amount of costume character fillers. I wasn’t very keen on the horse part of the show either but the kids really enjoyed it, particularly with the additional attraction of candyfloss 🙂
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Unfortunately we’d taken the closing time of 5pm in two previous years as the norm and heading over to the bigger ride area for the last hour just managed one ride before all of them closed 🙁 I had an even bigger gripe in that I’d hobbled to the toilet block to find it locked, hobbled to a second one to find that locked and then hobbled to the others to find them leaving a rapidly locking up park 🙁 . I was very fed up and ready to find someone to shout at but lost my fight when one of the toilet cleaners at the camping field ran after me to give me back my camera that I’d left in the loo 😳 so we headed off to Tesco for dinner and picnic for the next day supplies instead.

Jax had arrived when we got back and with Merry & Max arriving earlier our group had swollen to even bigger numbers (particularly given Babs now had two tents up 😉 ). The campsite was really filling up now, not with particularly desireable people in all cases but moving cars around to create a barricade and lighting a ‘campfire’ (small barbecue filled with charcoal) enabled us to gather round for marshmallow toasting, plenty of laughter, a bit of crying and generally loving being with friends.

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The last few of us stayed up really very late indeed laughing and talking – the evidence of which was still around when I woke up for my 5am wee and painkiller tradition:
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Saturday was Festival of History day one. We managed to leave the campsite at a fairly sensible time and walked in with Helen & Chris, Merry & Max. We’d all arranged a meet up at 1pm near the seaside for lunching together but the complete re-organisation of where each arena and zone was totally threw us. I still think we probably missed some bits despite being there for both days. We all have bits we prefer – I like Peterkin the Fool and wanted to see at least one of his shows, I also like walking round the various camps but am less bothered about the re-enactment stuff in the arenas. Davies and Scarlett would happily do activities and watch Punch & Judy shows for the duration whereas Ady would position himself infront of the loudest battle. We spent some time walking round the various camps, watched some of the lance battles and then spent some time in the Roman area where D&S played some games ” alt=”” />, by then it was time to head to the Fool but a sudden downpour drove us (and many, many other people) into the English Heritage tent. I suspect they had never been so crowded in there 😆 Ady and I had picked up some big yellow ponchos at Tesco the night before reduced to 50 pence each, so wishing we had bought more and could have resold them for profit, we donned those and headed out of the squeeze.
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We had sat down near where Peterkin was setting up on our ponchos as by now the rain had stopped but people all stood infront of us forcing us back onto our feet. The kids managed to get to the front but I was struggling to stand still and there was no where to sit so when the rain started pouring again and he cut his show short I was quite relieved. As an aside I was really fed up several times over the two days with other people’s selfishness in terms of positioning themselves right infront of others, pushing to the front, not caring whether those behind them could see. I was ever conscious of my foot which possibly made me even more aware of people in my personal space but several times we found a good position to sit infront of something to watch only to have others shove infront of us and block our view 🙁 .

Scarlett was hungry so we headed towards the seaside once we’d tracked down where it was, found some deckchairs and sat down. Scarlett forgot she was hungry and dashed off to play in the sand, Davies went off to watch Punch and Judy and Chris and Helen appeared and joined us. We realised the rest of the group was sitting on the other side to us but having claimed chairs satisfied ourselves with waving at them rather than moving. Ady went off to get tea and I heard what Helen had seen and done which gave us a couple of things to head for in the afternoon.

Suitably refreshed and with no further rain we had a good afternoon. We found the reindeer antler man Helen had mentioned (and has linked to I think, him with the fab beard). He was fab, really engaging, full of anecdotes and facts and very keen to let Davies and Scarlett do as much of the tool handling as possible. They each chose a piece of antler, drilled a hole in it and then etched a spiral pattern in it with some of his tools. He was perfectly happy to then use them to sell on his stall but of course we bought them – at £2 each I was quite happy we’d not been had 🙂

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We did some tussy mussy making in the YACs tent (very proud that both kids managed to id 5 out of the 6 herbs there), some wax seals and visited the pub for free lemonade for the kids before settling down at the main arena for the WW2 display. Scarlett was not super keen so I gave her a bit of a pep-talk (I’m sure you can imagine how that went 😉 ) and we got ice creams to eat on the way out. We missed the final parade which I do really enjoy but we were all tired, my foot hurt and we decided to call it a day.

We managed to make the same error of entering the motorway in the wrong direction that we’d done last year :rolls: and decided fish and chips for dinner was the way forward meaning no cooking or washing up, an early dinner leaving plenty of time for playing / socialising. Winning idea 🙂 .

Back at the campsite Stella and Rich had arrived and Katy and the little fishes (all four of them 🙂 ) came along too so we were a pretty big crowd (although missing LovelyEm who we’d said good bye to that morning). Which was just as well as there were pretty big crowds all round and the campsite was packed to capacity. There were more rain showers but they passed over and we had another dry evening in the end.

More marshmalllow toasting over the barbecue, more kids running wild, more drinking, laughing and chatting, another lovely evening, this time with added sky lantern spotting – a letting off one Jax had brought along decorated by them recently.

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Another late night surrounded by lovely friends, it finished off our very wonderful break camping in a perfect fashion 🙂 .

Sunday packing up went smoothly – having been critical of Ady’s packing the car technique for ages I finally got involved and told him where to stick things 😉 – he admitted it had gone in far better than he’s ever managed so I suspect I have just given myself a new responsibility 😆 Although I don’t know when we’ll next, if ever, be loading up that particular car for a camping trip as we’ll be at September camp in two cars.

We called in at Tesco for some bits for lunch (and some bits to take home for dinner later) and arrived at FoH at the same time as The Raines. We hooked up with them several times during the course of the day, meeting up to watch Peterkin, who picked Chris to be one of his victims which was hilarious
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We chatted to a US nurse who told us why the nurses wore bright red lipstick and how they had officer status and then Davies uttered the hilarious request ‘Mumma, is it okay if Ben and me go to the pub?’ 😆 He had cause to project me into his future several times this weekend 😉 . We folllowed behind the kids and they sat outside toasting ‘everyone who died in wars’ together while we looked on
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We split up again, having arranged to meet up for BZents later. We carried on and did most of the bits we’d not managed before including the Historical Marketplace. We did miss the woodland open air plays and I’d liked the idea of one of the talks about a relationship played out in letters (My Dear Howie). We looked for but could not find the skinner we’d enjoyed talking to last year but did find a stall with fox, squirrel and bear skins which was interesting. I also missed the allotment talks.

We bumped into Jax at the Antartic Explorers tent and had seen Kirsty and James at the Artisan bit so had told them of the plan for BZents at 415pm and we all were there for that. Most of the children who wanted to (with the sad exception of Ben 🙁 ) were included in the Horatio’s Last Hurrah play which was to the usual high standard and we decided that was a great high point to end on. We left at the same time as Babs and Kirsty, pleased to have a firm date to call ‘see you in X weeks’ to each other as we parted.

Satnav said the drive home should have been 2.5 hours but thanks to M25isms it was closer to 3.5hrs. Bath and food for Davies and Scarlett, I sorted dinner for Ady and I while Ady emptied his car, Scarlett was delighted to see her ducks (now most definitely no longer ducklings) and Davies was pleased to have the quails in his bedroom (who promptly started flying despite being only 3 weeks old so have a cover on their box now.

It’s highly unlikely we’ll be Wicksteed and FoHing next year given our plans for 2011 so it was fab to have had such a great weekend with so many friends. It was also the perfect end to such a wonderful week in Scotland, with J&J sandwiched inbetween. Ady is telling anyone who’ll listen how it ranks for one of his top holidays ever, Scarlett now has in perspective how amazing it is she has seen dolphins, Davies did a really good job of being the spare to Scarlett and Chloe and hanging out for the end of the week with Marcus and Ben – and as it turned out Maddie too 😉 and I am now looking at through rather different eyes and I had 11 nights away where despite being in really quite a lot of pain from my ankle had an excellent holiday. I loved the scenery, wildlife, views and campsite in Scotland and the comfortable, enjoyable company of Marcus, Michelle and Chloe. I loved dropping in at J&J’s for the peace of their landscape and gorgeous home, calming company and great taste in youtube clips, I loved being with our fab group of friends round a campfire at Wicksteed with all the in jokes, comfort for those in need and laughter and support. I also very much loved getting home to my house with a bed, a bath and a fridge ;).