A mental day!
I worked all day and it felt very hardgoing with my sleep deficit. 5o’clock took a very long time to arrive.
In the morning Barbara and Chris took all five children to the beach. From feedback it was lots of fun and very seaweedy! 😆
My Mum came over in the afternoon and very kindly bathed and hairwashed Scarlett aswell as brushing her hair. She is apparently no harsher or gentler than me in that department according to Tarly. 😆
Ady had gotten home about an hour before me and got the car mostly loaded up ready to go. I got changed, packed up the few last minute things and we were away by about 545pm which I thought was pretty good going.
The journey to Wicksteed should take just over 2.5 hours so 830pm would have been about right, I had been privately hoping for 8pm but I guess that was never realistic during rush hour.
In the end we hit roadworks on both M25 and M1 which had the time slipping further and further away.Our hopes of getting the tent up in the daylight were gone and I began to fret that picking up fish and chips for dinner somewhere near the campsite were likely to not happen too so in the end we pulled off at Newport Pagnell services for some food. Scarlett had just fallen asleep so had to be woken up but coke perked them both up and although they didn’t actually eat a great deal it seemed to be enough to sustain them.
We arrived at 10pm and Chris and Helen very kindly offered use of their guest wing for the night. It was certainly a lot quicker than us errecting our whole tent. The children ran off to play with torches while we sorted out bedding and camp mats and within the hour we were drinking cider / beer / coke and eating crisps and chocolate and the children were in their sleeping bags. Thanks again for that C&H, it made what could have been a stressy arrival nicely welcoming instead :).
I slept really well, clearly the answer to that first night camping insomnia is a 10 sleep deficit spread over the previous 3 nights ;).