One word? When seven would do…

It’s been a while!

Last week we were supposed to be going to Newgale for a long weekend, joining Chris and Alison, Sarah and Steve and Simon and Layla. The plan was to leave home on Thursday and make a day of the journey with Ady working as we went visiting all B&Q stores along the way. But on Tuesday morning his boss told him he needed to be in the office on Thursday afternoon and possibly Friday too which scuppered that plan somewhat. So with the options left being possibly not arriving until late Friday or even Saturday or leaving on Tuesday afternoon with Ady returning to work on Wednesday and then joining us as soon as he could later in the week we went for leaving there and then! So with great haste we packed everything up and were away by 4pm.

We raced the rain and had a good journey there, arriving at about 8.30pm just as darkness started to fall and getting our first real life view of the stunning shoreline seen on Chris’ flickr account so many times. Unfortunately by the time we’d located Alison’s tent and started to unpack the rain had caught up with us and by the time we had got the tent up we were drenched. 🙁 A hasty chucking of everything into the tent and getting the children settled and to sleep meant our plan of either heading out for fish and chips or cooking some of the food we’d brought with us were both out of the question so we dined on nice biscuits (with me realising after the third one just how much I really don’t actually like nice biscuits!) and went to bed ourselves.

Wednesday dawned very early for Ady who went off back to Sussex visiting B&Q stores as he went. The children and I had a more leisurely start to the day with breakfast, sorting the tent into some sort of order and catching up with the HEMUK children. Then we all headed up to Alison’s parents rented house for lunch, death defying clambering on a brick wall in the garden and very noisy jigsaw puzzle construction.

Back down to the beach again and Chris arrived. Tarly stayed on the beach collecting the biggest stones she could find, including wandering over the bank of the stones back towards the road and scaring us silly when we couldn’t see her suddenly. Davies joined us in the sea for a while and then got cold and wandered back up the beach to – I thought- play with the other children while Alison, Poppy, Tilda and I bobbed around jumping waves until we got too cold. We found Davies in a sobbing heap on the beach as he’d been unable to spot us in the sea and had convinced himself I’d drowned. 🙁

We headed up to Val and Clive’s for dinner which in a somehow quite fitting but surreal nonetheless way involved it being Christmas for the evening. There was the same Christmas cd playing that we listened to at Okehampton, lots of people round a long table with children sitting at a tacked on bit with an assortment of chairs from around the house at one end and a variety of joke telling after the meal. We had a log fire roaring away and all we were really missing were crackers! Scarlett ended the evening with a really quite spectacular meltdown just to add to the festive feeling 🙄 but it did mean so fell asleep almost instantly when we got back to the tents.

Thursday Dawned bright and sunny and brought Simon, Layla and Claudia mid-morning with rain following along behind not much later. It appeared to be a shower though and was sunny again after lunch. A quick phone call to Ady ascertained that he was still planning to join us that evening but his ETA was getting later and later so having agreed a skill swap with Chris I headed off with him to get supermarket shopping leaving Davies demonstrating very vocally why he would be so not suited to waving me off cheerily at the school gates each morning. The disappearance of Daddy coupled with the near-drowning incident of Mummy the previous day was clearly still very much in his mind and no amount of reassurance that he was staying with Alison, Layla and Si and assorted children was enough to comfort him. I believe chocolate chip cookies managed it not too long after I was out of sight however. We stopped at a garage where I found supremely bargainous wetsuits for sale. Davies and I had gone to the next to the camp site surf shop that morning and tried on a second hand one for him which was priced at £28 so I was delighted to find a not as good quality but who cares really brand new one for a tenner less at the garage. And it made a good guilt assuage gift too for the abandonment.

Once back at the site Davies tried on his new wetsuit and Si and Claudia went back to the garage to get one each for them following a classic comedy bin liner related wetsuit left behind situation rendering Si wetsuit-less. When they returned I tried Si’s on for size guidance and persuaded the ever-ready-with-a-lift Chris to run me back to the garage again to get one for me. Clearly they sell way more wetsuits there than they do petrol. 😆

Fully wet-suited-up we all went across to the sea for a bob about in the fast fading sunshine. Newgale is in a bay so the sea has land edging out in the distance to the left and right and we could clearly see a massive storm over the left with a black sky, loads of lightening and thunder rolling ominously round the bay while we still had blue skies and sunshine above us. Eventually we got cold enough to decide we should head back to the tents and cook some tea before the inevitable rain drove us inside again so we went back and had showers etc. Davies and Scarlett were naked under poncho towels in our tent while I was still prancing about in my wetsuit when the rain started in earnest. It was lashing down and filled the saucepans I had outside the tent in minutes. Our tent entrance was a bit flappy in the wind so I ducked out, still in wetsuit, to peg it down a bit more and was joined by Chris with his mallet who then spotted a break in the pole over our bedroom pod so we tried, in vain, to fix that as the rain drove ever harder over us, with thunder and lightening crashing and flashing directly above it suddenly turned to hailstones and was coming in clumps of four or five coupled with a strong wind blowing them almost horizontally. I ducked into the tent to check how the children were doing only to find them backed up into a corner with the edge of a flood lapping against their feet having got a good third of the way up inside the tent.

I shoved them into Alison’s awning while Chris and I battled with brushes and saucepans to try and clear the water, while moving all our stuff up to the back of the tent. All the while laughing at the madness of the situation and with Chris pleased that the stove was staying alight to get some tea on. He asked Alison for a saucepan only to find she was in the tent, flanked by six children, using all available receptacles, saucepans included, to bale out the water that was flooding their tent too! 😯

Layla and Si were in similar straights so we saw the rain out and had a quick look around the site to see which area was not ankle deep in water ready to stake a claim to a different part of the field. I was still in my wetsuit! 🙂

Having identified a suitable area we moved a small tent for the children to be grouped into and then set about emptying all the tents out, moving them across the field and repitching them, then filling them back up again all with the threat of more rain likely. Out of the woodwork came an army of helpers from all corners of the campsite and we had ourselves organised and set back up again really quickly thanks to the lovely other campers who even offered us tea when they’d finished humping our stuff across a field. Darkness fell, I finally got out of my wetsuit and by about 10.30pm Steve and Sarah had arrived followed very closely by Ady. 🙂 Some time was spent eating hastily boiled food like noodles and pasta, drinking wine and recounting the story of the Great Flood of 2006 to the new arrivals.

Friday Ady had to do some local garden centres and as everyone else had plans and the children – not to mention me! – had missed him so much we decided to go with him. So we did a circuit of some of the nearby garden centres, stopping at Pembroke Docks for lunch and to feed the hoardes of swans that swim along. It continued to be a ropey day weatherwise and we headed back to the campsite around 5pm to find the others preparing for a beach barbecue and campfire. We headed over to the beach where Chris was in charge of catering, Ady went off with Davies and Scarlett to look at rockpools and I enjoyed having none of my family anywhere within hearing distance and several glasses of red wine with my friends. 🙂 As darkness fell we lit a fire, toasted marshmallows and sang songs. A perfect evening. 🙂

Saturday Oh how it rained. Again. The prospect of a day trapped under canvas with so much else to see drove us out again with the plan of seeing an advertised ‘massive’ garden centre for Ady to tick off his list. Once back at the campsite the rain eased a little so we went back to the sea, this time having a go at bodyboarding.
In the evening we gathered in Steve and Sarah’s awning, I managed to cook what had been the most ill fated stir fry in the world finally. And I also managed to cut my finger open whilst washing up. The washing up room has two large sinks side by side and you have to wash up in a bowl. I was standing doing my washing up chatting to the man stood next to me with a young daughter and I plunged my hand into the soapy water filled bowl to feel a rush of pain and see the water start to slowly turn red. For some crazy reason I didn’t want to draw attention to it so I carried on chatting away, did my washing up as quickly as possible (not very well clearly given the water was bloody) and then wrapped the dishcloth round my finger and hotfooted it back to Ady to inspect the damage and play his qualified first aider role to perfection. He banaged me and then applied a plaster when it had stopped bleeding. And kissed me better ;-).

Sunday The best day of the week weatherwise easily. And a fantastic day all round. We all joined the Price / Tooth family on their annual trip to Oakwood Park. Excellent place with loads of rides to suit everyone. The children loved the tamer stuff like kiddie rides, Davies and Scarlett who are on the thrill seeking side anyway adored the scarier stuff like the Treetops coaster, the Snakefalls water rides, the Bobsleigh and Plane Crazy (can’t even type that without feeling a bit queasy) and as we’d gone off with Layla, Si and Claudia, Si and I became ‘Coaster Buddies’ and did a couple of the scarier ones together. We rejoined the others and went round as a group for a while including Si, Alison, Sarah, Anna and I all going on Speed together which was amazing. 🙂 We did some more of the kiddie rides including the Bob Sleigh (which Tarly and I managed to turn into a white knuckle ride anyway ;-)), Brer Rabbit, the pedalos and various other tame ones. We waved goodbye to Layla and Simon during the afternoon while most of the children were watching a magic show. A stop for dinner and then Alison, Poppy, Sarah, Anna and I (can’t wait til my children are old enough!) went off to ride Megafobia in the dark, followed in Anna and I’s case by Speed and Bounce completing the triple. Alison joined us for Speed and Sarah for Bounce before we dashed back to join the others for the grand finale of Oakwood of a singing and dancing show finished by dancing fountains and a firework display. Looking round the tired but very happy faces of all the children, held in parents arms and lit up by the fireworks was the perfect end to a lovely day. And I have very impressive bruises across both thighs from the ride bars on all those rides. 🙂

Back to the campsite where all the children who hadn’t already fallen asleep on the way went to bed very quickly leaving the remaining adults to sit round some burning candles chatting and enjoying the last evening.

Monday A leisurely breakfasting with lots of chatting made for a slow packing up of the tents with us finished around midday. Davies and I had a last swim in the sea while Ady and Tarly walked the beach looking at stones and rockpools and then we decided to get going to get home in daylight, finally arriving home around 7.40pm.

Since getting home we’ve embarked on a whole other rollercoaster but I’ll save the telling of that for the morning. Photos are on flickr and we had a truly lovely week. Newgale is beautiful, the company was great and massive thanks to Chris and Alison for everything. 🙂 xxx