Most kids enjoy camping - I know I did. As a family we camped everywhere from the New Forest to the Scottish Highlands and even camped our way across the Alps to St Moritz one year in a little Bedford Caravannette. It's a great way to see the country because there are plenty of places where hotels are expensive or few & far between, but there never seems to be any shortage of camp sites or even farmer willing to let you pitch on one of their fields.
You can spend a lot of money on kit if you like. Camping is something you can also do on a shoestring, though, and get just as much, if not more, enjoyment from it. Our first caravan was a very small-scale affair, and although we've now progressed to something a bit bigger and better-equipped, Naomi still hankers after the character of our first outfit. We've some friends who are very much into minimalist camping, though, and I have to admire their tenacity, because they take a small 2-man tent, sleeping bags, gas stove and that's the lot, for two large adults, 2 boys (one 6 & one 13) and a border collie. Cosy!
Naomi's parents have a caravan which we've
used in the past. They camp all over Scotland and we had a particularly good
trip with them to the Highlands the year before last. We enjoyed it so much
that we started thinking about getting our own. The Holland trip we did with
them early this year decided us, one way or the other.
Naomi and I had thought about getting our own caravan and started
buying some magazines. In one we found a really good cheap offer to get people
more into caravanning abroad. As her parents were fairly experienced
caravanners and, more to the point, actually had a caravan, we invited them and
their outfit to join us for a jaunt to Holland for a week.
This was a trip organised by Eurocamp Independent along with Caravan Life Magazine, and it was terrific. We drove down to Harwich and got the ferry across to the Hook or Holland getting to Holland in the early evening. One of the nice features of the expedition was that all of the outfits doing this week got the same ferry and we had a chance to meet up and get to know each other on the ferry journey across.
The camp site chosen was Camping Konigshof, which is situated in Rijnsburg, near Leiden. Leiden is a university town about half way between Den Haag and Amsterdam, and Rijnsburg is ideally situated to be a base from which to explore the whole of Holland. The site itself was immaculate and the owner Philip, who speaks flawless English as do most Netherlanders, was a model of affability, charm and efficiency.
We tended to tour in Ernie's Shogun most of the time, and got in trips to
We also toured right round the northern end of the country via the 40km long causeway. We did one coach tour along with all the other people on the week, which took in a local flower auction, a clog factory, cheese farm, Franz Roosen (a huge flower distributor - we've just received a large order of bulbs from them), and Amsterdam, where we took one of the boat trips around the canals and had a couple of hours to walk around the town.
Great week. If I've any recommendations it's
that you leave yourselves plenty of time for Amsterdam, as we didn't even
scratch the surface. Take your bikes if you're into that, because the priority
and facilities afforded cyclists are second to none in Holland. One of the best
times to go is the end of April/beginning of May, the time we went. It's then
that the bulbs all start coming up and in the week we were there the whole
country is transformed into an absolute riot of colour. Lastly, don't worry too
much about finding a good phrasebook as you simply will not need it. The dutch
are very friendly and most speak almost perfect English, certainly far better
than any dutch you're likely to pick up unless you live there for a time. We'll
certainly be going back to Holland.
Our first outfit was limited to some extent
by our car, which was a 14 year old Honda Civic Shuttle (never got into the
running as towcar of the year!). Our local Caravan Dealers,
Emm-Bee Caravans
of Bury Road, Heywood, found us something we could tow, though, a 12-year old
11' Monza Supreme. 2-berth with a fridge, cooker and loo - what else did we
need? Well inevitably there's a few things when you first start caravanning,
like water containers, light plastic crockery and plastic mugs, but we were
soon ready to go...
Hollingworth Lake is nestled in the Pennine
foothills and anyone driving from Manchester to Leeds gets a birds-eye view of
it as they head outwards from Milnrow. It's a popular watersports venue and the
surrounding hills make it a dramatic & picturesque location. There's a
small caravan site at the western end of the lake and as that's fairly local
for us we decided to make it our first weekend out. We pitched without major
incident, but the first night we had something approaching a tropical
rainstorm. Several nearby tents were blown down and the little Monza was being
buffeted around like we were in one of those VR simulators which are now
popular at fairgrounds. The Monza uses the old style of construction before the
more modern sandwich method came into fashion, and the interior walls were
going in and out with each gust of wind as if it were breathing. Hollingworth
Lake is a nice site although the more pretty pitches do not have electric
hook-up.
Another weekend trip out was to the
Morecambe area of north Lancashire, to the Detron Gates camp site with our
minimalist camping friend Jim & Sylvia and their kids. It's a very
hilly site and certainly not one for our current outfit (see below), and the
facilities do not compare with many others, but the owners are friendly enough
and we had a great weekend. We found a great Farm Park for the kids near
Carnforth, which is now also housing an Owl Sanctuary - well worth a visit.
We actually did two trips out to North Yorkshire, a weekend trip first then a 2-week long holiday once we'd scouted out a couple of good sites. We started off at the Golden Square site near Helmsley. Facilities here are second-to-none, and they've won "Loo-of-The Year" award many times [Seriously, people do actually arrange such competitions]. The site is spotless, with super facilities for kids, several whole fields in which to walk the dog, a great shop, and lovely countryside surrounding it.
Our second site was a bit more disappointing, halfway between Whitby and Scarborough, not far from Robin Hoods Bay. It was a good spot from which to explore the coast but not much more than that. The last site, though, was a real find, at Foxholme, just off the main road from Helsmley to Pickering. This was charming, completely wooded with individual little pitches cleared out amongst the pines.
There's so much to see and do in North Yorkshire that I can only mention our favourite bits:-
Whilst we were en route to North Yorkshire, we happened to have the opportunity to call into a weighbridge to check the loading on the caravan, and found that whilst we had been told that we had a 2½ cwt loading margin, we actually had something just under 1 cwt As it happened, it didn't matter too much on that trip, because we'd borrowed Naomi's father's car which was taking most of the stuff anyway, but clearly we had to do something about it. The dealers from whom we'd bought it were pretty good, given that they'd unwittingly misled us (with a 12 year old caravan that's gone through numerous owners, it easily possible that some modifications have been made). Anyway Emm-Bee gave us back all our hard-earned dosh against something else without even a murmur. I wonder how many caravan dealers would do that?
About the same time, the CV Joint started to
go on the Honda and it was clear that it likewise was not long for this world.
One thing led to another, and we ended up part-ex'ing the Honda against an 8
year old long-wheelbase Mitsubishi Shogun and getting a 5 year old Eldiss
Crusader Storm. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous... The
Eldiss is over twice as big as the old Monza, weighs up to 1½ tons
when fully laden. Having said that, she has a twin axle and is an absolute
dream to tow. She has four berths in all, but one of these is a bunk that's
folded away and in practice, she's a very spacious 2-berth van, with a huge
kitchen area, loads of storage, and a real boudoir at the back with a
completely separate dedicated shower and not one but two wardrobe units. -
Heaven on 4 wheels!
Our first outing was a fairly short one,
again, to Clitheroe which lies just over Pendle Hill from the M65 between
Blackburn & Burnley. We were used to going up that way frequently enough to
go to a massive car boot held there each weekend at the cattle market, where
Naomi used to spy out crockery and old chairs etc on which to paint her canal
art. The site, Three Rivers, had an indoor swimming pool, but was not one of
the better sites we've been to, expensive, poorly equipped and with unhelpful
staff. Still a good weekend had touring factory shops in the region, and we
even made the outdoor pool at Colne.
This was our best trip to date, over the August bank holiday weekend. We chose the Wild Rose site near Appleby, south-east of Penrith, not far off the A66. Wonderfully well equipped site with an outdoor pool, several play areas for kids, lots to do indoors too if you wanted or the weather dictated, and fabulous on-site shop, and good plumbing! In practice we didn't spend much time there, but toured far and wide, reaching not just a good deal of Cumbria, but also the Yorkshire Dales, Solway Firth and even Durham.
I can't detail all the places we visited,
but two roads stick in my mind. The first was that between Alston down the
Pennines to Penrith, not a road on which you would want your brakes to fail.
The second was the Kirkstone Pass between Ullswater and Windermere. It wasn't the first time I'd done it, but
each time it's a thrill seeing the view from the top. Another of our favourites
is Honister Pass, which has a very dramatic sweeping
view, quite reminiscent of Glencoe in some ways. The steepest and hairiest
passes, though, are definitely the Wrynose and Hardknott Passes - not one for
the caravan under any circumstances [...and good fun even in a beefy 4X4!!].
Our first trip out in 1997 was in mid-June, when we took our outfit over the Pennines to the Yorkshire Dales, staying at the Westholme Caravan Park near Aysgarth Falls in Wensleydale. We travelled via the M6 and Sedbergh, where we promptly got lost and actually travelled over the tops from there to Hawes via a tiny unmarked single-track road which took us through Dent. This was fairly hair-raising in itself, since Dent has very narrow winding cobble-stoned streets which are impassable to coaches or HGV's, and are a very tight squeeze for a 24' caravan! Shortly past Dent we got to our next obstacle, a narrow bridge nestling near the Settle-Carlisle railway, with right-angle approaches onto and off the bridge itself, and the bridge is less than 6 inches wider than the caravan!
Anyway, we eventually got to Aysgarth. Westholme Caravan Park is a good, well-kept site, with friendly and helpful proprietors. If I have one criticism, it is that there is only one ablutions block, situated in the centre of the site near the static caravans, with tent and touring caravan areas at each end of the site, a good five minutes walk away. We found it to be a good base camp for touring, and easily managed trips to both the North Yorkshire coast (repeat visits to Robin Hoods Bay, Whitby and Staithes), The Lake District, and Durham & Cleveland, as well as covering most of the Dales themselves.
This was not the most successful trip, however: Not only did it rain almost continually throughout the week we spent there, but our water system packed up on day one with no possibility of repair until we got back to Manchester, and the awning decided to start leaking. My mother was accompanying Naomi and me on the trip and we had ceded the van itself to her and were using an inner tent in the awning. In monsoon conditions with a leaking awning, this was not a great success <grin>.
Our second outing in 1997 was a two-week jaunt, the first of which was spent in the Lake District. We chose as our base the Stanwyx Park site in Silloth, on the southern side of the Solway Firth. Silloth is an old Victorian resort town which is now resting on its laurels. Attractively laid wide streets and a nice park beside the promenade are spoilt by the presence of a large factory right next to the centre of the town. A Fair was in town when we visited, but there seemed to be a distinct lack of interest, and there seemed to be a sleepy atmosphere of creeping decay around the town.
The Stanwyx Park site is a large commercial site which evidently derives the majority of its income from static caravans rather than tourers. The facilities are quite superb, with indoor and outdoor pools, two bars, a good restaurant, a games room, amusements area and an excellent outdoor play area for the children, as well as pony-trecking on-site. The indoor pool has adjoining sauna, steam room, solarium and fitness room. All the facilities are free to residents (except the solarium & pony trecking).
The fact that the tourers are second-class citizens is evident, though, from the location of the touring pitches. Despite booking 6 months in advance, (and stressing that we had a large van) we were placed in a veritable shanty-town tucked away at one corner of the site, far from any facilities, right next to (and I mean right next to) the main road south out of Silloth, on the other side of which was a car showrooms which insisted on having a noisy generator running 24 hours a day. Heavy plant started digging an enormous hole in a lane next to the showrooms on the day we arrived, and heavy tipper trucks trundled noisily past our pitch starting at 6am each morning! To say it was extremely noisy would be a gross understatement. We had to wedge ourselves into a small space suitable for a van half our length.
Undeterred by our experiences at Silloth, we
immediately went the other side of the Solway Firth to a wonderful site at
Brighouse Bay in Dumfries. This site is beautifully landscaped with excellent
facilities. There's loads of space for kids to run around, and a great
adventure playground where our 4-year old nephew entertained himself for hours
on end. The site also boats a fair-sized indoor pool, a golf course and slipway
facilities for anyone with a boat or jetski. Although the site was very full,
you never had the impression of being crammed in, as had been the case at
Silloth.
Although we didn't know it then, our trip to Dumfries and Galloway was the last time we'd use the caravan for the next 18 months. I was diagnosed with Testicular Cancer shortly after completing our trip to Scotland, and the 1998 was taken up with doing up our house in Bury. By the spring of 1999, though, we were ready to venture our again. Naomi and I chose to try the delights of Lancashire and Cheshire. First we went to the Caravan Club Site at Blackpool. This is conveniently situated a short way off the M55, a couple of miles inland from the seafront. We had a very relaxing few days there along with the Megagerie [currently consisting of Sammy, a standard poodle, Gus, an African Grey Parrot, and Daisy, a sulphur-crested Cockatoo]. Parrots on campsites are not nearly as rare a sight as you might imagine, but are always good as conversation-openers, particularly when the parrots in question start shouting "Hello" or "What are you doing?" at the tops of their voices.
We left Blackpool and travelled south via Liverpool, under the Mersey and down the Wirral peninsular to Ellesmere Port, nearby which is the Chester Fairoaks Caravan Club Site. This was delightful and we spent a full week here. There is a huge number of attractions locally (eg: Chester Zoo, Blue Planet Aquarium, The Wirral, Liverpool, Ellesmere Port Boat Museum), and we didn't spend much time sitting around on the site! Chester Fairoaks is for us a more attractive site than Blackpool in that it's got more in the way of trees, and nooks and crannies. Stanney Oaks is a mile away and provides a superb woodland walk which Sammy enjoyed to the full.
This summer we decided to tour Wales. We started off
heading along the North Wales Coast past Caernarfon to the small peninsula at
the south-western end of the Menai Strait, near the village of Dinas Dinlle.
Here there's a delightful campsite called Morfa Lodge, a large commercial site
with a lot of static caravans as well as dedicated fields for tourers and
tents. The facilities are excellent including a good shop, outdoor swimming
pool and two separate swing parks for the children. One disadvantage which
became immediately apparent is that it is located at the edge of Caernarfon
Airport, and the light aircraft coming into land frequently pass directly over
the campsite at disturbingly low altitudes! Having said that, the British
Aerobatic Team were practising for a competition the first few days we were
there, so we were entertained by some spectacular aerobatic displays over the
airport which made up for the semi-contunuous drone of aircraft engines.
Indeed, Naomi and I managed a brief trip in a light aircraft while we were
there, including my actually flying the plane, thereby fulfilling one of my
lifetime ambitions.
The coast is just the other side of the airport, although the beach is a pebble sea-defence wall except at low tide, but the Lewin Peninsula, Anglesea and North Wales Riviera are relatively short distances away. It is also an ideal jumping-off point for exploring Snowdonia. We did the trip up the rack & pinion Snowdon Mountain Railway which takes you right to the summit the easy way. The other really memorable trip we did was to Aber Falls, the other side of Caernarfon. This involves a 3-mile hike up into the hills, but you're rewarded at the end by the highest waterfall in Wales, and the opportunity to cool off in the pool underneath the waterfall or the stream issuing from it. This was some of the coldest water I've ever dipped in, but it was certainly refreshing on a very hot day.
After a lovely sun-soaked week in Gwynned, we made the long trek down the coast to Pembrokeshire, near the small town of Narberth. West Wales is an old stamping ground of my family's: When my father retired as a solicitor, he took up sheep-farming on a hill farm, Bwlchgwynt, located near to a tiny village which delights in the name of Ffarmers. We've many wonderful memories of fence-posting our hill-grazing up on the mountain above the farm, getting the hay in, and generally having a good time. The people of West Wales are really friendly and welcoming, and we still have many friends in the area with whom we keep in touch.
Noble Court Caravan Park is a nice site, but the weather was not nearly as kind to us during this second week. The site is sloping, but terraced, so the pitches are relatively flat. The site has its own pool and a bar, but no shop. The proximity of Narberth, however, which has a delightful town centre, means this is not a problem. There is also a very large area of open fields which are an integral part of the site, ideal for dog-walking and for the kids to play in when they get fed up with the swing park next to the pool. For anglers, there is a stocked lake on the site itself with picnic benches adjacent.
Besides revisiting the farm for a bit of nostalgia, we also made maximum use of the couple of reasonable days weather we got, with trips to Whatesands Bay and a jet-boat tour round Ramsey Island, and a delightful evening canoe trip down the gorge at Cilgerran, on the River Teifi.
We broke our journey from Pembrokeshire back to Manchester and spent a couple of days at Chirk, just over the border between England and Wales, hard by the Langollen Canal. The Dee valley at Llangollen is absolutely delightful and well worth a visit, by car or boat. The canal hangs off the side of the valley and there is a great walk to be had from Llangollen to the Telford Aqueduct over the Dee at Pontcysyllte.
This trip was planned around the fact that Naomi's sister Judy had got a special offer for a chalet on a holday park at Ilfracombe, and we didn't feel it was worth going all that distance for only 4 days. We therefore planned a touring holiday to take in the best of the country down there, and more specifically all the bird aviaries we could find (and there's quite a few!). The weather was gloriously sunny for most of the holiday, and we were only subjected to rain for the last 3 days. Our outfit is really intended for 2/3 people (with an additional bunk for a child) and we were sleeping 4 without the use of our awning, so your's truly ended up sleeping on an airbed on the floor alongside the fridge and cooker on one side, and Naomi on the dinette bed on the other. Needless to say, by the end of the holiday I was completely used to being trampled on at 3am by people going to the loo! :)
We started out with a long trek down the M6 & M5 to Somerset, to the Broadway Caravan Park, just outside Cheddar, in Somerset. For this trip we had ourselves, Naomi's parents and a total of three dogs. For us, Broadway was an ideal jumping off point for trips to Cheddar Gorge, Cheddar Caves, Wookey Hole, Rode Bird Gardens, Secret World, Glastonbury, and we even found our way back to the Old Lock & Weir on the Avon, near Bristol. We also visited the Clarks Village at Street, near Glastonbury, where the Weiss women [well Naomi's mother, anyway] indulged their passion for buying shoes and Thornton's chocolates!
After 3 days at Broadway, we moved on to the Hidden Valley Caravan Park, between Braunton and Ilfracombe. This is a delightful site in the bottom of a steeply sided forested valley. There's a playpark for the kids and a bar/restaurant for the adults, but little else in the way of extra facilities. It's a lovely setting, though, and we explored North Devon (Ilfracombe, Porlock, Combe Martin, Lynton & Lynmouth etc) and Exmoor from there.
We spent a total of five days there, for four of which Naomi and I defected to a chalet at the John Fowler Holiday Park at Ilfracombe, to join Naomi's sister and her family, who were staying there for a few days. This was cheap & cheerful, but there's plenty to keep the kids occupied and the indoor pool boasted a sauna which was lovely!
Next we moved on to the edge of the New Forest, north east of Poole, to the Oakdene Holiday Park at St Leonards. Getting there was not without incident, since our Autoroute-generated directions showed the site to be about 15 miles away from its actual location, and we were unable to contact Naomi's parents once we'd discovered this, because they were visiting relatives in Plymouth instead of going straight to the site with us. This ended up with the local constabulary, a local garage and others all becoming involved in trying to work out which site they were trying to get to at 9pm at night, and my waiting for a couple of hours at the Autoroute-generated location in case they turned up there [Come on Microsoft, get yer act together!].
This site was something of a disappointment. The attitude of the staff was poor, and there were loads of petty rules and regulations, but none of the staff seemed bothered in the least by the fact that most of the water points were not working, the ablutions were in a shocking state and the showers were positively dangerous (scaldingly hot with no temperature control!). Still, there was a fabulous forest walk available for the dogs just yards from our pitch, which we made the most of. We enjoyed exploring the New Forest, Lymington, and Poole, and also took in Birdworld (some way away near Farnham) and Longleat (including a visit to their world-famous Parrrot Show), as well as trips to Lulworth Cove & Portland Bill. The weather stayed good for all this but thankfully we were treated to a brisk gale from the east when we got to Portland Bill, which made for some dramatic sea conditions <grin>.
After 4 nights in Dorset we made the trek up to Charlbury, near Woodstock, on the east side of the Cotswolds, and stayed three nights at the Cotswold View Caravan Site. This is definitely one of the most charming sites we've ever visited. The owner has done an enormous amount of work to make the whole site attractive, with mature trees and shrubs bedecking the site itself and a positive plantation of firs and deciduous saplings planted around the forst and farm trails, which will grow into a wonderful wood in a few years time. The ablutions were first class, heated and even with piped music, bathrooms and family rooms. The whole complex includes a B&B, self-catering apartments, stables, and a farm park, all built in matching cotswold stone.
Although at this time of year we had the site pretty much to ourselves, it's apparently fully-booked most of the summer, hardly surprising because it's well placed to explore Oxford and the Cotswolds. We toured the latter, over as far as Painswick and including the obligatory Chipping Camden, Burford, Broadway, Bourton-on-The-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold. We also went to Birdland at Bourton-on-the-Water and did a nocturnal tour of Oxford. The weather broke during all this, and the indian summer of the previous fortnight gave way to misty drizzle. This marred the view of the rolling countryside at times, but somehow improved the villages themselves. Highlight of the three days was definitely a raid on a delicatessen in Chipping Camden, where we emptied the place of crusty home-cooked wholemeal bread, farmhouse paté, brie, houmous, rollmop herrings and tiptree marmalade!:)
More to break the journey as anything else, we stopped off at Trentham Gardens, near Stoke-on-Trent, for a couple of nights. The site was pretty waterlogged while we were there, owing to a relentless monsoon rain which hardly stopped the whole time we were there. The site's huge, with plenty of space to spread out, and surprisingly full given the weather and time of year. The two main loo/shower blocks are paradoxically next door to each other, which we found a little weird, but there's a good dog walk, and the gardens and lakes themselves are lovely, if a bit run down.
This site gave us a chance to tour the Peak District, and we took in Leek, Buxton, Castleton, Bakewell (with a stop to stock up on "genuine" Bakewell tarts, which are the size of a car tyre, and almost as deep!!), and Matlock. We also visited the Blue John Caverns, near Edale - the 249 steps down to the bottom were bad enough on the knees, but the 249 steps back up again nearly had Naomi, Ernie and Brenda all in hospital. Once again our views of the Peaks were spoiled somewhat by the inclement weather and mist (hence no photos), but it was a very enjoyable day, nonetheless.
Our first outing in the new Millennium was to a 3-day weekend of Obedience competitions organised by the Waldridge Fell DTC anear Chester-Le-Street in County Durham. This weekend is billed as one of the best social events in the Obedience Calendar and we were full of expectations lugging our outfit up the A1. The site for the show was a series of fields, two of which were dedicated to the large number of tents and caravans which always turn up for the weekend. We got there pretty early on the Friday afternoon and secured a pretty good position on the better of the two fields, nearer the rings. Unsurprisingly, there were no electric points, and only one water and one elsan point, but water was the least of our problems! Just as soon as we had put up the awning the heavens opened and it didn't stop raining for 36 hours, by which point several tents and caravans were in the middle of a series of small lakes. The competitions went on relatively undisturbed, although it made handling difficult in the slippery mud. The Sunday was fairly dry but the heavens opened again on the Monday and by the time people started leaving the field was a complete quagmire. Those without 4x4's (and even some of them) were being towed off by a Landrover and eventually by a couple of 4WD tractors!
Anyway, superb weekend despite the weather, a leak in the rear of our caravan becoming apparent, resulting in our having to rip up the carpet in the rear compartment, and all our electrics failing on the Saturday night for 12 hours (a short after the heavy rain). We'll be back next year hoping for the usual sunny weekend!
Our next outing was to another weekend of Dog Shows at Bromborough in the Wirral. This is a delightful spot on the edge of the Eastham Country Park which was a handly and beautiful location for dog walking. The whole setting is quite delightful and we had another really superb weekend of obedience competitions. Once again, only one water point and one elsan point and these were quite a way off from the majority of the caravans, but given that the location is not even occasionally used for caravan rallies or meetings of any sort, the organisation was perfectly adequate.
The weather was pretty good for the whole weekend (albeit with some rain) and we enjoyed some lovely walks in the Country Park, walking right down through the woods to the edge of the Mersey estuary on one occasion. Eastham Country Park is well worth the visit. Our best find was a lovely sculpture of a huge snake carved from a fallen tree trunk which was all the more impressive for being totally unexpected.
July
2000, Castle Cary Caravan Park, Dumfries and Galloway
Our main
holidays for the year were to Castle Cary Caravan Park near Creetown in
Galloway. This is a delightful site which we enjoyed thoroughly. The facilities
were excellent with very good ablution blocks, a very wedll heated outdoor pool
which we used several times each day, good games facilities, a reasonable shop
and an excellent pub and restaurant/take-away facility. The site is completely
overrun by rabbits which gave the dogs (of which we had four in our party) an
entertaining 10 days. The site is immediately off the A75 and so less than two
hours drive from Carlisle and giving good access to the Galloway Forest and
other local attractions.
The weather
was quite superb for the whole of our stay with no rain and bakingly hot sun
for most of every day. We toured the Galloway Forest, returning to old
favourites like the Raiders Road Forest Drive, which has the Otter Pool, a
spectacular series of waterfalls which invite paddling and are a great hits
with kids of all ages, some excellent wooden sculptures and a lovely swimming
spot next to them, which we duly indulged in. We also visited the Logan
Botanical Gardens on the Stranraer Peninsula. Our other really good find was
Kitties Tearoom in New Galloway which served some really exceptional
home-cooked food and cakes, not cheap but well worth it. We also revisited
other old haunts like the beach at Seaward, near Kirkudbright, where you can
walk out to the wreck of an old fishing boat at low tide, and Cream O'
Galloway, where we indulged our appetites for ice cream! Nearby, at Carrick, we
found a great spot for an evening dip just round the corner from the Fleet
estuary, with good snorkling at high tide and rock scrambling at low tide. The
lack of wind made the sea like a millpond and we returned there time and
again.
Foot and Mouth put a serious damper on outings to Obedience Competitions in early 2001, and the first time we had occasion to get the outfit ready was mid-May. Well just to show that caravanning is not always a matter of "hitch-up-and-go", here's the story of that week. We had the caravan all ready to go, car packed up to the ceiling with 3 dogs, two parrots and a disgusting excess of personal baggage for only 5 days. Hitch up the caravan and...
...nothing! The van's brakes had seized on one wheel since its winter service back in November 2000. Well we tried banging the linksages, attacking the wheel hub with a lump hammer, all to no avail. Eventually we had to postpone our departure until the following day when we could get the mechanics at Emm-Bee to have a look at it. This they promptly did, but in the meantime the car had developed a fault requiring immediate attention and we eventually abandoned the trip to Bedford completely!
Are we downhearted? Well not too much, and hopefully we'll have everything A1 and ready for our annual outing to Waldridge Fell dog show on the Whitsun weekend. ......Durham here we come - Yahooooooooooooooo!
