Another Stormy Night & A Day Spendng Money! - 27th July ‘20

The problem with rubbish weather on holiday with the boys is you just spend spend spend! However, we did manage to salvage a nice enough day out of another appalling day of weather!

The day started early - we were all woken by a tremendous storm at 5.30. To be fair it had been raging from midnight and continued until gone 10am but it must have been particularly bad at 5.30. Isabella was really being battered by the 50mph winds and the horizontal rain! I popped out to check all the pegs and then moved the car around to be between the prevailing wind (the south) and Isabella. As in the infamous Whitby storm this trick seemed to help!

So from 5.30am we had both twins in the bed. The night with Harry was equally as uncomfortable as the one with Finners. Finners lashes out with his legs once and extremely violently - like a Backstroke swimmer starting off - while Harry is persistent using all his limbs and continually pounding you like a front row forward trying to get the ball. To say which one is better is a ridiculous concept like asking someone if they prefer tooth ache or stomach ache.

The funny thing is if you think of all the weather Brunnehilda has had to withstand over the last 12 months it would bring tears to you eyes - thunderstorms, rainstorms and winds the like that I don't think I have ever experienced anything like before? And to think, that when we bought her we were wondering about getting air con!!!! I think we’ve only had a couple of days where we have had all the windows open! 

We headed out to Bideford at 11am. That’s the great thing about Twinnies .... we’re always out and about fairly early. No leisurely cup of tea in bed, no lazy breakfast with omelette and coffee, no relaxed shower and ablutions!

The rain was due to last until 5 so Kim found an outlet shopping place called The Atlantic Village in Bideford. They had a Nike store and Charlie had money in his wallet! It wasn’t a great success. There wasn’t much there apart from an Asda and the Nike shop. We queued up for 45 mins in the drizzle to get in the Nike shop and then when Charlie and Kim got in, they had nothing on the shelves for children!! Kim did manage to get some bits from Weird Fish.

We grabbed a KFC and headed back to Brunnehilda via Sainos for the boys to buy more toys and DVDs and Charlie to buy a Nerf gun. 2 more guns were bought for the Twinnies so when we got back to camp they had some fun firing them at some random targets. Although the 2 that went onto our neighbour’s awning were not part of the plan!

Kim did some washing and then we headed out to Woolacombe for the evening. Crazy Golf at the Pirate Adventure Golf.

Then more ice creams and then a walk on Woolacombe beach where they managed to get absolutely soaked - rolling up trouser legs doesn’t work when you wade through rock pools up to your thighs!?

We bought some excellent pizza from Stoned (a van on the beach) and headed back to Brunnehilda to eat it.

A DVD in bed (Captain Underpants) for them and a cup of tea and blog / read in bed for us. 

Finners will join us in bed tonight but the good news is that there doesn’t look like there is going to be any rain tonight/ tomorrow. Not much sun either but hey, no complaints here. After the last 24 hours, we’re just delighted to have, in the words of Barry Manilow, “made it through the night!

Oh by the way, to clear up a couple of things before finishing ... Charlie won the crazy golf - no idea how but his Grandma was scoring?!

Today’s funniest moment came on Woolacombe beach when Harry was so focused on eating his ice cream he didn’t realise the step down was so steep. Luckily he held onto the railing and went spiralling down it like batman going down the bat pole. To be fair to him, not one bit of ice cream was spilt but the look on his face was a picture!

A day in Clovelly- 31st Jul ‘19

It’s amazing how quickly a morning disappears!! Charlie and I slept in Isabella - the new camp beds were good. It was a little chilly in the night and the wind howled but we both managed to sleep well. Better than Kim did with the Twinnies thrashing about! We all woke at 8 and it was 1.30pm before we had had tea in bed, breakfasted (used the Caddy again!), washed up, ablutted, put a load of washing on, emptied the toilet cassette and took the boys for a quick bike ride.

We decided to go to Clovelly this afternoon. We didn’t really do our homework - I knew it was a walk down through the village to the harbour but I didn’t remember it being so bloody steep and cobbled! If we had realised we might have chosen more appropriate footwear. The boys did well and we got to the bottom, ate a pasty, had an ice cream, walked on the pebbled beach and got back to the top - all in a very enjoyable 3 hour stay. 

On the way back up the hill we had some caricatures done of the boys. These will embarrass them for decades to come! The guy was very good if not a little over assertive with both sitters and guardians! I suppose you need to be and he did a good job.

Back to Woolacombe for another game of Pirate Golf and dinner back at the Red Barn. This place is growing on me - the food is plentiful and good, it’s reasonably priced, the people are nice and, considering it’s so busy, they seem very efficient. Ice creams all round and then back to Brunnehilda.

Charlie didn’t  want to sleep in Isabella tonight so Kim and I had a manic 30 mins doing some packing up prep to make tomorrow morning just a little less stress full!

I’ll do a summary of the Damage Barton site tomorrow but in the meantime I thought I would summarise the highs and lows of our caravanning week.

Good - we got Brunnehilda set up safely and easily on quite a fierce slope.

Bad - I wasn’t happy with how Isabella. looked - not as tight as I would have liked.

Good - the awning light and carpet are great - good buys.

Bad - the inner tent and blow up mattress were a disappointment.

Good - we managed well with all 5 of us inside overnight. Not bad in a 3 berth!

Good - we slept in Isabella for the first time. Even in a gale force wind she stood firm!

North Devon (July /Aug '19) - Day 2

A cracking day - productive and enjoyable so whats not to like?

It started off with a visit to the office to check in properly and guess what ... it turns out I did have Brunnehilda correctly positioned on the pitch after all. The confusion was partly due to our neighbour's (other-side) sloppiness and the campsites positioning of the markers, Either way, I wasn't at fault and Brunnehilda remained un-moved. Result - nice to start the day with a heathy dose of vindication.

So, mainly because so much happened and partly because I can't be arsed to prose this entry as neatly as I should, I have summarized the day using a chronological list of highlights. And, of course it gives me another opportunity to do a bullet list!

10 am: A visit to the camp shop to buy a toy poo, a croissant and a pan au chocolat. The first 2 were for Charlie.

10.30 am: A superb fry up. Probably the finest bacon bagel I've had for some considerable time. Good job Mrs Pitts!

11.30 am: The erection of Isabella - which, considering we were on a significant slope and the wind was howling off the Bristol Channel, it all went surprisingly well. Full erected and pegged out in about 1 3/4 hours. Charlie provided the muscle for the pegging out. One disaster though ... the centre roof pole came out during construction and crashed onto Kim's head. After a period of groggyness and the resulting cartoon like bump, an important lesson was learnt - don't erect awnings in the company of small children or without having all your wits about you!

1.30 pm: We walked for 45 minutes via a splendid footpath from the site to a little village on the sea called Lee Bay. The views (and the properties) were absolutely splendid. We walked up to the pub, called Grampus but we couldn't get a seat in the garden. We headed back to the water and bought a smashing coffee / tea from the wee stall by the car park. It tasted so much better as we drank it down by the water amongst the rock pools. By this time the sun was shining and the strong wind we had at the top of the hill had all but disappeared down at sea level.

3.30 pm: The walk back up to the campsite, along the same footpaths, still took 45 minutes but it has to be said was more of a physical challenge for the 2 older members of our party of 3!

4.30 pm: We went off to Woolacombe - about a 10 minute drive. We had a bit of a snack at the Red Barn. Not exactly high cuisine but Charlie and I cleared our plates - Chicken nuggets and Chill Nachos respectively. It was quite good value for money as it had a nice view of the beach and I was certainly tasting the chilli in my nachos several hours later! After that we had a round of Pirate Golf at Funderland. Kim won! I was holding back to let Charlie win but the current Mrs Pitts clearly hadn't read the script!

6.30 pm: A walk and a paddle on Woolacombe beach. It has apparently won an award as the UK's best beach. I for one wouldn't argue with the merits of that particular accolade. The water was nice and warm and the huge expanse of sand and water (it was high tide) was very impressive. We did witness a bit of early evening excitement though. The Coast Guard were out, on the beach and in the sea, to try and find / help a surfer who had got into trouble. I don't know how it ended but for the sake of maintaining the holiday mood lets assume everyone got home safely for their tea!?

8.30 pm: Back to the campsite and I put down the new awning carpet and put up the new light. Very impressed with them both. Not so with the inner tent though! We need some string (high tech eh?) to fix it to the awning. Charlie will have to sleep in Brunnehilda again tonight and wait to christen Isabella tomorrow with his dad.

9.30 pm: Kim and I have a cup of tea watching the sea and sky merge into blackness. I blog and Charlie watches Jurassic Park. He fell asleep again - one day he's going to finish that bloody film!