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.

holiday makers?

how to work out if the car in front is from 'up country' (on holiday in Cornwall).

is it/ does it have...

1. a foreign number plate

2. a VW campervan

3. a campervan (any make)

4. a roof box

5. a roof rack with surfboard(s)

6. a roof-rack with bike(s)

7. a roof-rack with boat

8. a roof-rack with canoe(s)

9. a shiny clean 4x4 with tow-hitch

10. towing a boat

11. contain any of the following - body boards/ windbreak/ cool box/ wetsuit/ picnic rug

12. being driven between 30- 40mph on a 60mph road

13. driver has just worked out he is in the wrong lane at the roundabout/ traffic lights

i actually saw just about all of these on the way into work this morning, so i am now thinking of a points system so i can start to rank my journeys too and fro from Truro. just how many points could i award for a foriegn plated vw campervan with a boat on the roof in the wrong lane at the trafalgar roundabout?

you will note that i have excluded caravans as they are just too easy to spot, as is in fact any car that is in the queue at Temple on the A30 on a friday or saturday.

camping

as mentioned in the previous post matthew and i are going to Greenbelt at the end of the month. this is a work trip for me, and matthew has very kindly agreed to join us. we shall be taking a group of young people from across Cornwall. this is the first time that i will have been since i was a teenager myself and my memory is mainly of mud!

we took stock of our camping equipment, we both had bits from before we were married, and decided that we needed a bigger tent to accommodate the two of us. matthew then took the requirements one step further by requesting one that he could stand up in (he is 6ft 4). so after some research we ordered a Vango Icarus 600. it is quite large, so large in fact that we can't actually put it up in our garden, so this weekend sees us undertake a camping trip just so that we can have a go at putting up the tent!

in the process of buying the tent we have of course spent more money on additional accessories, including a canopy extension, new airbeds (and pump) and a barbeque. tonight we wrote a list and discovered that if you go camping you need to take an awful lot of stuff with you. in comparison there is something quite simple about booking into a b&b.

for this trip we are going all the way to the Roseland (about 10 miles), we have gemmed up on the instructions including video and hopefully all should go quite smoothly. so please think of us tomorrow night, unlike the video i suspect we shall have a minor argument whilst erecting the tent, the tent pegs will be a lot harder to put in and it will definitely take longer than the suggested 12 minutes.

herman

we have a new lodger at home. goes by the name of herman. he doesn't require too much attention, just a daily chat and occasional feeding. though my budget for eggs, flour and sugar has suddenly increased. the bonus is that every ten days or so you do get some cake to eat! so he probably isn't doing too much for matthew's and my waistlines.

i was given a herman starter dough, with instructions of how to feed and care for it over ten days. on the tenth day you divide it into five, save one as your next starter, cook one and give the others away to your friends. worrying that i might run out of friends, i have discovered that if you only give him half quantities, you have enough mix for 3 portions and therefore only have to give one away or (some could say even better) cook two cakes.

i have cooked the original recipe and then had fun experimenting with different ones, so far a carrot cake, two lemon drizzle, one chocolate and one coffee. the carrot got given to my aunt in thanks for putting me up for the night (it was then put in the freezer to my uncle's disappointment), one lemon and the chocolate are lurking in the freezer. the rest have proved to be very tasty and moist. i did try and make some biscuits, but they didn't work too well.

this is quite good timing as i am building up a stock of cakes to take away to Greenbelt at the end of the month. but if anyone would like to take a herman and have a go themselves, please ask.

good life update

just to update you on our garden produce. we've had a few, very tasty, strawberries, but with only four plants there were never going to be loads, however the plants are reflowering so we may get a second crop. the potatoes were a let down. having had loads of healthy looking leaves, they suddenly wilted, so we decided to harvest and got a lot of very small, but again tasty, potatoes. i think ants were the problem here, the bin was full of them when matthew harvested.

my carrot got attacked and was never more than a very skinny root. the beans are now flowering, but seem to need copious amounts of water, similarly with the tomatoes.

to date the success has been the chilli plant and we have harvested four now, with more setting, in fact in a few minutes i hope to eat a lovely chilli con carne made with homegrown chilli!

so in summary, not a brilliantly productive garden so far, but still some hope for the future!

little miss sunshine

yesterday was my postponed nine month dental check up. it was postponed from the easter holidays as i was a bit poorly back then, so it got rearranged for the summer holidays.
for various reasons i have kept with my dentist in hereford. yes it is a bit of a trek back there now, but it generally gives an excuse to visit friends and it is nhs! so although it was a four hour journey each way, involved an overnight stay with relatives and quite a bit of petrol, the actual treatment only cost me £16.75 - bargain! apparantly i have got lovely teeth and because i was a such a good patient i got a free sticker - i chose the Little Miss Sunshine one!

bargains?

today matthew and i 'saved' £76. one of our favourite glass shops Jo Downes had a 70% off sale, and for once there was no 'up to' in tiny weeny letters on the sign. even better this reduction was on everything (except mirrors but it did say that in reasonably large letters, they were 20% off), so we bought a soap and moisturiser holder (see picture) for the Moulton Brown products that we bought in Bath, another sale 'bargain', and some other bits and pieces that either we will use or that will be finding their way as various Christmas and Birthday presents over the coming months. in all we purchased 8 items for less than the full price cost of the soap holder - not bad.

this almost beats the amazing £300 that we saved at the Swindon outlet centre back in May, there we had to spend £150 to save the £300. actually mathematically it probably does beat that shopping trip, it's just that the numbers are more impressive on the Swindon trip.

but the question is - how much of this sale stuff is actually a bargain. do you really need it? will you use it? all questions to be considered. in Marks and Spencers amongst the debris of their women's sale clothes one woman did comment that what seemed like a bargain in the shop wasn't always a bargain by the time it got home.

if you notice the time of this post - yes it really is stupid o'clock - i can't sleep, and having done so well on my 'bargains' earlier in the day, i feel it is now time to surf the net looking for more - but don't tell matthew!