Camping

On Thursday 15th July we decided to go camping with AM & Pete and Daddy and all the kids for a couple of nights – unfortunately, we decided to go on the coldest and wettest day of the summer yet! Still, as optimistic as ever, we had a ball! The girls had never been camping before and were uber-excited and loved every minute – even Juliette, feeling properly cold for the first time ever!

We chose an absolute gorgeous campsite in Cannock Chase, on ‘Pillerton Farm’. Can’t believe how beautiful Cannock is – I spent almost a year there in my teacher training and never noticed the Chase at all!! The first afternoon was spent just keeping the kids occupied, getting the tents erected before the rain set in, blowing up the beds and then BBQing sausages under an umbrella! Once it was time for the kids to go to bed, there wasn’t much point in staying up in the rain, so the first night was pretty uneventful!

The next day though, was clearer and brighter and we traveled into the local town, Penkeridge, for lunch. This was a beautiful ‘gingerbread house’ type village where we found the most fantastic of ‘old style sweet shops’ with sweets in jars, being measured by weight. A good 20 minutes was spent in there choosing our sweets, oohing and aahing over the sweets that evoked amazing childhood memories. I bought blackjacks and humbugs. The girls bought penny sweets and sherbert, Andrew bought his favourite sherbert lemons. YUM! The campsite had gorgeously clean toileting and showering facilities and a great children’s play-park; it really was a great find. The second night, we went to a pub for dinner in Rugeley – the journey there meant we drove through some absolutely gorgeous scenery – Cannock Chase is so beautiful?! We stayed drinking and chatting late into the third morning, in between our tents, whilst the kiddies slept – ahhhhhh! Life’s stresses are reduced significantly when little people are asleep! We spent a leisurely morning packing up in the most glorious sunshine (isn’t that just the way – the days you camp, it’s not so great weather wise, the day you leave, the sun is burning bright!!!)