holiday from hell?

after the first hour or so* i can report that the weekend's camping trip went reasonably smoothly. the tent stayed up - although it took longer than the 12 mins that vango say to put up - you can stand up in it and cook in it, the campsite was lovely with a good sea view and the weather was extraordinarily kind. so much so that i can plan the rest of my greenbelt trip in reasonable confidence knowing that i can always hide in my tent if things get too wet and muddy (my previous two experiences of greenbelt).

there was a lot of comparison's going on on the campsite - tent sizes/ styles/ cooking arrangements and so on. it was also quite fun guessing where people had come from and realising just how brave young romeo opposite was, coming camping with his girlfriend and her parents - and they were all in one tent!

we cooked on our new barbeque (ask matthew about barbequed toast), visited the tea rooms at Heligan, had a kip on saturday afternoon and had friends around for a barbeque on saturday evening. sunday morning was lovely and sunny so we revisited dodman point (picture above), which was only about a mile and a half away. it was here about 18 months ago that matthew proposed to me, then we had it to ourselves for a long time, this time we had to share with, amongst others, mr 'i love talking' from goran haven. we then packed up our tent and were home within half an hour. really quite civilised.

however on my way to work on tuesday morning i saw a family on their holiday. it was mizzling and they were about to tackle the hill outside tresillian on their bikes. dad had panniers and a pull along buggy thing on his bike (couldn't see if there was a child in it or if it had equipment), mum had panniers on her bike, eldest son (11ish) had panniers on his bike, and younger son (8ish) didn't. all i could think was - this is so not the kind of holiday that i could ever go on. camping might just about be doable, but a cycling and camping holiday - now way!

* within the first half hour, my choice of pitch was dissed. my suggestion re direction of tent was dissed. my guy rope directions were dissed (later proved to be right). when we got the direction of the ground sheet wrong i really was ready to go home.