One word? When seven would do…

Saturday Work for me in the morning – Ady ran me in and I pottered about ordering in more top up books for my rather successful dinosaur display, sorting out the Reading groups folder and then covering the desk. One of the resident ‘characters’ is a man who claims to have written a book about Arsenal FC (mostly based on the wikipedia information he gets us to print out) and has now turned his attention to Liverpool. He is quite rude, very demanding and incredibly smelly. I am quite curt with him and match his tone of rudeness back as it really puts my back up to be spoken to like that. He often brings in scrappy bits of paper with misspelt things on them and expects us to decipher his handwriting and creative spelling while sitting back and demanding we print things off for him. Last week in my 11 hours I dealt with him 3 times and once handed him over to someone else to help him with the photocopier he had annoyed me so much. It’s rare I feel disinclined to be helpful at work but he certainly has that effect on me.

Ady and the kids picked me up at 1pm in a fully loaded car. This weekend, where we travelled fairly light but still in a jam-packed car has decided us that a roof box really is a necessity. I really feel we have cracked packing sensibly in terms of not bring loads of stuff we don’t need but we were full to bursting and that was without the larger tent or things like windbreak, clothes for a longer period and the toilet. Davies and Scarlett are getting too big to have much stuff stacked around their feet and I’m very aware of a long car journey to Scotland in July being made as comfortable as possible by not having the car stuffed full. Ady also tends to be in charge of packing the car up and gets very stressed about what goes where and in what order so it would be nice to have more space to play with to allow the tent to be taken out first when arriving but packed in last when leaving if that makes sense.

The drive to Norfolk was long and pretty boring, mostly motorway and increasingly flatter with less to look at the further north we went. It took 3.5 hours and we drove through all sorts of weather conditions but arrived in bright sunshine. We were really impressed with lots about the site – friendly staff, excellent toilet and shower facilities, large central park area for the children with climbing frame, sandpit and swing, a pen with a load of goats (that was Scarlett happy then!), a small shop that was reasonably priced on essentials and had a nice selection of penny sweets and goat food for the kids to get their retail hit each day. There was a small woodland area which Ady, Scarlett and I went off for a walk into once and the children all had another wander into one evening and the site had a friendly, safe feeling.

On the downside despite the pitches being very flat and generous with cute little hedges seperating them it all just felt a bit ordered and organised. Our favourite campsites are the ones where campfires are allowed, you pitch where you like and experience a real feeling of being away from civilisation and out and at one with nature. This campsite with it’s hook ups and high proportion of campers and caravans with satalite tv, strings of fairy lights and wireless broadband felt a bit too much like suburbia with the odd tree on each street corner to offset the rows of terraced houses. I liked it, have nothing to complain about it but it’s not what we love about camping. And it was quite a long drive.

But as usual it’s friends that make all things worth the effort and it’s felt like far too long since we’ve been with friends. Lovely to be with Marcus & Michelle, Chris & Helen, Jax & Tim, Bob & Katy and all assorted children and meet Zoe and Wayne aswell :).

We pitched nice and quickly – the new tent went up really easily and the new camp kitchen fitted nicely in the porch so the cooking area was all undercover-ish. Really pleased with the set-up for shorter camping trips :). We didn’t quite manage to pitch totally straight though and the first night’s very heavy rain did puddle a little on the roof of the second section and come through in the night to create a few pools inside the next morning. Easily remedied by more careful pitching next time though.

The first evening there was a hog roast on site and as our planned meal of bolognaise hadn’t defrosted yet it was very welcome. Ady, Scarlett and I had hog roast, Davies had some beans. We really enjoyed it :). We sat out all evening on Saturday although it did get quite cold. As usual I didn’t sleep much the first night and the very heavy rain at dawn meant I was pretty tired on Sunday.

The rain did cease around the time I got up and Ady cooked a lovely cooked breakfast. Davies wasn’t very sociable for much of the weekend and I’m pretty sure hook up didn’t help as the lure of sitting next to the heater watching dvds in the tent proved stronger than playing with friends in the park. Scarlett hooked up with some other small girls goat worshipping so she didn’t spend as much time with friends as I’d expected either. They both say they really enjoyed the weekend though but were not as much a part of the group as they usually are. I wondered if that was due to a large number of the group being more regularly meeting-up friends. I also watched Davies for a while with some of the older girls getting pulled and prodded about and called ‘Boy’ in a slightly derogative tone. I didn’t talk to him about it and if it was worrying him he could have said so and I’m sure they’d have stopped but Davies’ first line of defense tends to be retreat so several times when I asked him why he’d come away from the group he simply said he didn’t enjoy what they were playing so had left.

Michelle and Chloe returned from a walk in the woods having seen a herd of deer up quite close so Ady, Scarlett and I went off for a walk too but didn’t manage to see anything. A nice walk though :). The others were heading off to a local museum which sounded quite interesting but Scarlett very vocally was against museum visiting, Ady was happier just hanging out at the site and Davies was also just as happy staying put so I nipped into Cromer for a few bits from the supermarket, some more socks for Ady, some socks and a hat for me and returned with the sunshine. Davies and Scarlett were very happily at the park, Ady and I had declared it alcohol-o’clock and were sitting in the sunshine and the Salmon’s arrived, soon followed by Chris & Helen and Marcus & Michelle.

A very enjoyable evening followed with special entertainment laid on by Chris and his tarp :lol:. It was cold but stayed pretty much dry and most of us decamped into Chris and Helen’s tent. Ady stayed in our tent chatting with Davies and Scarlett who had snuggled into bed already when a nighttime woods walk was mentioned. We didn’t tell them as getting them up and dressed again seemed too hassly but those who went enjoyed it. I was already one glass of wine over sure footedly walking in woods in the dark so I didn’t attend either ;).

I slept much better thanks to socks. Hate to say it but like tables I have to concede they may have uses ;).

Monday was Bewilderwood day. We’d planned to leave in convoy but we were all up and ready to go and I get all stroppy hanging around so we headed off. We expected everyone else to catch up but in the end we had most of the morning just the four of us as the others had taken a different route and stopped at the storytelling. As it happened we had a really nice time and it’s rare Ady gets to enjoy stuff like that with us so it was no bad thing. We had loads of fun on the wires, bridges, giant swings and crazy slides.

I really liked Bewilderwood, I loved the little tree houses and things like the shoe tree. I love the low environmental impact of a theme park based on your own energy instead of rollercoasters and other electric fancies. I thought the cafes and kiosks were very reasonabily priced and we loved the free crafts. All four of us made a mushroom to bring home and Scarlett made a butterfly feeder too. I thought the shop was disappointing and we didn’t buy anything in there as it was either plastic tat unrelated to Bewilderwood or ethnic ethically traded stuff that was lovely but expensive and equally unrelated to Bewilderwood. I’d already ordered the books from the library so no need to buy those and we have a lifetime supply of soft toys already. The man at the exit gave us handfuls of badges though so we all left with about 4 of those each :).

I thought the educational price Michelle organised was a fair price for the day, I’d not have wanted to pay full price though. Thankfully the weather (and it wasn’t nice, it hailed twice) kept away what I would expect to be usual bank holiday crowds but the crafts and interactive storytelling would probably not have been around on a normal term time week day so we got the best of both worlds for braving the elements.

Some of the others were heading to a local walk on the way back to the campsite but we decided to head straight back as we had the tent to take down. Ady was working Tuesday which meant either packing up and heading for home Monday evening, arriving late but having the kids and I home for Tuesday meaning we could do swimming lessons, get washing done, be around for the possibility of early ducklings hatching (due on Wednesday), plus my parents are due back. Or packing up early Tuesday and spending the day in the car with Ady visiting garden centres on the way home. We went for late home Monday.

The weather was a bizare mix of sunshine and showers with lots of wind blowing the clouds about so the kids played and we packed up as the weather allowed, finally leaving just the tent. We stopped for fish and chips for dinner and a final cup of tea and chat before loading the tent and the kids into the car and finally got off about 845pm. We had a very easy run home, both kids actually dozed and we pulled up a few minutes before midnight.

Thanks to no Candle to deal with the house was exactly as we’d left it, we stripped sleepy children off and into pjs and bed and they fell back asleep in moments. Ady and I had a cup of tea, enjoyed having the heating on and sleeping in our own bed. A late night but definitely the right decision :).

I have photos so will drop them in later. A really nice weekend with lovely friends, not the most perfect first camp of the year weather wise but equally could have been a whole lot worse and a great way to kick off the season. Bring on the coming weekend! ;).