First camp

860Emma’s birthday week started well. SOC had one of it’s summer series events at Telegraph Woods (by the Rose Bowl) on Saturday. Christine had a run whilst the rest of us went round the yellow with Neil and his girls. About half way round we’d had to resort to bribes to keep the girls walking and eventually cut back without finishing the course. We were then joined by my brother for a picnic in a shady spot overlooking the construction work on the cricket ground (which was a plus point by the way).

We returned home to pack the car for a night’s camping which seemed to entail an inordinate amount of baggage but then we did have to squeeze my brother in as well. Thankfully it was only a short drive to the campsite at Roundhill in the New Forest. After some confusion booking in over just how many people and tents we had, we eventually found a pitch (all the shady spots seemed to be out of bounds) and put up the tent. Everyone else went for a quick explore whilst I cooked up that culinary delight: beans with sausages in!

Bedtime was a protracted affair. Duncan just wanted to roam about the tent and had to be taken away to be fed to sleep. Then Emma just wasn’t in the mood for sleeping and it was 9 o’clock by the time she finally went off. If my brother hadn’t been around then we would have probably all just gone to bed at the same time which might have helped. Emma, however, did make up for it by having a lie-in in the morning. In fact, I’d packed up pretty much everything else in the tent before she finally woke.

We went for a short walk in the morning and had to drag Emma away from the hide (den to her) and stream so that we’d get back in time to grab some lunch from the shops in Brockenhurst and then find somewhere for another picnic on the way home.

All in all, Emma seemed to enjoy the experience so we should be able to get her camping again in future without too much trouble. There are a few photos on Flickr.

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