Catch up

Friday Market Day for me 🙂

Up super early and then a fair bit of hanging around waiting for Amanda to be ready. I hate that. I loathe hanging around waiting for people, particularly if I have gotten up earlier than I want to or have rushed myself. We brought her younger daughter Z with us too (I’m not super keen on her), drove to Tavistock and unloaded the car. I set the stall up while Amanda and Zoe moved the car as you have to park away from the market as the roads are pedestrian only after 9am. I enjoyed that bit of it, I like playing shop :).

The other stall holders were quite friendly, introducing themselves and chatting. The market is quite a small one, a pannier market with a variety of stalls. We had two tables and so set one out with meat joints, sausages and burgers and the other with pies and pasties.

Unfortunately it was a very slow day indeed with us only taking £100, which once stall fees, travel and the fact two of us had sat there from 8am til 4pm made it really not worth doing. We took it in turns to go and wander round the market, pop into the town for a walk round etc. and chatted but it still went very slowly indeed.

I offered to drive home as I’ve not driven since we left home so I enjoyed driving the 4×4 along the country roads – quite a nice drive :).

When we got back to the farm Mum & Dad had arrived so we all went in the house for a cup of tea and to introduce Mum & Dad to everyone. Pete & Emma recommended a local-ish pub for a meal so we went to Mum & Dad’s B&B to check in and then back to the pub for a meal. It was very lovely food and a really nice atmosphere plus fab to catch up with Mum & Dad and bring each other up to date on everything.

Even better was that when we came back to the van there was a note from Pete & Emma taped to the door to say they had decided to only do one market rather than two the following day and therefore as we’d worked so many hours already that week we could take Saturday, Sunday and Monday off 🙂 🙂

Saturday We decided to head for Bideford where Pete and Emma would be doing the market so we could go and see the set up and have a look round. There had been a rumour that a TV chef would be there on Saturday doing something for TV cameras and it sounded like it might be the bloke off One Man & His Campervan who we’d have been really pleased to meet and talk to so that was also a bit of a draw.

Mum & Dad got lost trying to get back from the B&B to us at the farm though so it was long past 11am when they arrived, by the time we’d had a cup of tea with them and walked around the farm a bit to show them round it was late and we didn’t get to Bideford until gone 2pm. We didn’t find the markets or the TV chef but we had a nice wander round, bought ourselves a length of washing line so we can set up a washing line now and some food in Morrisons for dinner.

We came back to the van and had a nice evening hanging out here sitting in the sunshine outside the van and having a picnic style dinner before Mum & Dad headed off to the B&B again.

Sunday We’d hidden mini eggs around the van before we went to sleep so the kids spent a riotous few minutes finding them – not many places to hide them really 😆 Mum & Dad arrived and we headed off to Okehampton for a few hours. We parked in the town and walked round, everything closed of course being Easter Sunday. We walked up the hill to the youth hostel and looked at the station and shop which was all open before walking back down the hill to try and find somewhere to get a sandwich. The two pubs were only selling roast dinners but we did find a little tearoom cafe which had sandwiches so we had lunch in there.

Back to farm for a couple more hours sitting in the sunshine and chatting before driving to the Village Inn again for dinner. Another nice evening and delicious food there, then Mum & Dad dropped us back, had a coffee with us and then said goodbye having decided to head straight for home on Monday morning rather than coming to see us as they were worried the journey would be long and trafficky.

It was really good to see them but hard to be hospitable when we live in a van. I was really aware it was a very expensive weekend for them, paying for their B&B and then taking us out for all those meals but we did offer to put the tent up and let them sleep in the van and to cook basic food in the van (although we don’t really have enough crockery and cutlery let alone oven space) – I think next time they visit we will have to plan better for mealtimes and of course they will have a better idea of what to expect.

I suddenly felt not very well but attributed it to having eaten far too much when I have not been used to big meals for weeks so went to bed but I woke a couple of hours later and was very sick 🙁 I just about managed to get outside of the van and was ill into the hedgerow, staggered over to the loo to clean my teeth and have a wash with very compromised vision in the dark without contact lenses. I did fall straight to sleep and slept through til morning.

Monday started far earlier than I’d have liked with both kids sitting on the bed playing DS – they are into some Farm World game which is hugely inaccurate, which they keep pointing out at length with their new status as farming experts ;). I felt pretty washed out and feeble but no longer sick. We had a quiet morning, I managed to eat some lunch and still feel okay so we had a walk in the woodland oppposite the farm this afternoon. It was very lovely, we spent some time just sitting still and quiet in the woods to see what we could see and hear and Davies spotted a deer quite close to us that we all watched for a while until it got spooked by us and ran off.

Scarlett found a geocache! We paused at two tree trunks to look at butterflies and she noticed a bag shoved between the two and pulled it out to find a box. That amused us all lots 🙂 we’ve been on plenty of geocache hunts with friends where the cache is never found despite fancy GPS machines, detailed clues and lots of people looking!

Back at the van the kids played with Zoe on the farm, I blogged and had some time online and Ady hung out with me in the van. We went in to have dinner – roast turkey, one of the ones we helped prepare last week – with everyone and chat about the coming week.

I have photos to add but poor Ady is falling asleep at the table so I need to help him turn the van into a bedroom and let him go to bed!