Had my first camping of the year just over a week ago. Nicola’s first one ever so we decided on a week at Shell Island. Well that was the plan.

Arrived nice and early on the Friday (well about 10.30am but we did travel through rush hour, no major problems luckily). Gorgeous day, warm, slight breeze, fairly quiet on site. Set up the pitch and had a lovely day generally (apart from big group of lads being noisy and singing a song about Scuba Diving at 2am next morning, oh well you get them everywhere). Saturday was a bit more cloudier, breezier and wetter so not as good but still enjoyed it. Sunday morning we were woken about (just after midnight by noisy lads singing that horrible Scuba Diver song again, at least I also heard a warden tell them off, and then woken again at) 4am with the walls of our Vango Venture 500 tent boinging about making sleeping uncomfortable.

Seeing as we were awake and the wind was getting stronger still we went and sat in the car. Looking round many other people were up, and some tents were really taking a battering. Some people were sleeping through it all I think. Eventually we made the decision to put our gear in the car for safe keeping, then disassemble the tent til it calmed down a bit. But a pole was snapped so we made the decision to come home. Tent might have been OK but not risking it if the winds remained up. By 7.30 we were leaving the site, and some 100 or so people had done so already I think I heard. Man on the gate said 60-70 mph winds were reported up the Welsh coast.

So although the trip was spoiled, Nicola was not put off and at least we got a little trip and will have to go back sometime. Here’s a pretty picture.

At least I have my other tent (Vango Omega 450) from last year, so I can use that until we can afford an Outwell Montana 6 or something equally roomy and stable.

I wanna be a scuba diver…

It’s bank holiday weekend. I’m I’m working it yet again! The last couple of B/Hs have had relatively good traffic, not so much this weekend. Wonder if it’ll be any better this evening.

Managed to finally find some of those really nice chocolates that I mentioned on my old blog. Good old Woolworths! I thought I’d probably have to wait til I went to Ireland (as theyre Irish) so was nice to find them. They are milk chocolate filled with caramel and a dark chocolate top. Not too sweet, just right.

Less than 2 weeks til i go away. That is plenty of time for the sunshine to return. Yesterday was raining and windy and horrible to drive in. Even more so as the cars on the motorway cannot handle it (even drizzle) and slow to 50 like idiots (if they can’t drive on the motorway, get OFF the motorway!) so have to try weave round them using whatever gaps are possible (because they sit at 50 in all lanes no matter what’s around).

Even walking down the Chinese last night it was so cold and blustery it felt like November. Horrible.