Actually I don’t seem to have blogged Friday but it was far to far away ago now to do it any justice. I worked all day. It was fine, I did Baby Rhyme Time and was pleased to have an influx of new babies rather than the slightly too old toddlers we have been getting (it’s supposed to be for under twos). Ady spent the morning getting stuff ready to be loaded into the car, Mum was here in the afternoon. I took a couple of the chicks round to Rainbows for show and tell which always goes down well. Mum came with me to the allotment while Ady loaded the car up and I took the chicks round to Tasha’s as she was ChickSitting for the week. Mum stayed late with us, we drank lots of wine, she went home. Think that’s it.
So Saturday morning we packed the last few things and were off and away for 930am. We’d decided Davies and Scarlett should go to Wildlife Explorers as it was the last one of the school year and we know that actually if we’d not had that motivation to get out of the house we’d have easily been another hour faffing around anyway.
Dropped them off and was called in to see the woman who runs it. Really Davies should be in the next group up as he is 8 but she’d kept him in with Scarlett in the beginning and left him there. So from September he will go up to the older group. This means Tarly will be there from 10-11 and then Davies from 11-130 as they do loads more in depth stuff in the older group. This will cut it fine for days when Magic Lantern falls on the same day but Davies is pleased and looking forward to learning more stuff :).
While the kids were in there we nipped to the local town to the Somerfield for some supplies for lunch and a few other camping essentials for the first night. Unfortunately neither Ady or I bothered to read the massive amounts of text on the carpark entrance board and assumed it was free for supermarket customers. Turns out it isn’t and we have a £25 parking ticket for failing to display a parking disc. The warden advised we contest it when Ady complained about the signs so I will do so tomorrow but am assuming we will have to pay as even I don’t believe ignorance is a fair excuse.
Finally we were on our way. It’s six hours – 300 miles to Shell Island. We did the whole journey in one long, glorious hit without even a loo stop. We hit virtually no traffic and arrived within about 2 minutes of the satnavs original time which I thought was pretty impressive given the distance. The kids watched films, DS’d and we chatted a fair bit although it was so long ago I have no idea what about!
We arrived, checked in and paid and then rang Michelle who came to meet us to lead us to where they had pitched. Katy and Becca had already arrived but it was clear that the campsite was so busy the choice of pitches had been severely restricted and they had found the best available of a rather poor lot. Our tent actually pitched quite well being the smallest of the group and the children set off straight away to explore with Chloe and Becca. Wine o’clock was declared, The Babs and co arrived (should we be calling your sister The Suze?), were kindly offered overnight space with Katy and accepted, food was eaten, more wine was consumed, a fire was lit and all was well with the world with a plan to move tents tomorrow when as the man at reception had told me ‘80%of the people on site would be leaving’.
Scarlett had a bad cough and we quickly realised that ironically we seem to lacking quite a bit in our first aid kit. It’s very suitable for First Aid at Work, less suitable for Scarlett on a campsite. Luckily Barbara was to the rescue with calpol which Tarly had to swig from the bottle for want of a medicine spoon and although she coughed through the night and I kept waking to find myself in a heap at the bottom of my sleeping bag at the bottom of the camping mat at the bottom on our sleeping pod due to being on a steep slope it was a fairly stressfree errection and first night and good to be there with friends.