We left Kentwell later than we’d hoped, and so didn’t arrive at the camp site for Muddle Puddle until 10.30! It was dark, raining, very windy and generally unpleasant. Fortunately Merry was about doing her pot-holer impersonation with her head torch, rounded up Nic and between us we tried and failed to put up a couple of small tent’s of Merry’s that we thought would be easier than putting up our big tent. No, I managed to rip one fatally, so Merry took further pity on us and put up a party of refugees from 1584 in her lovely cathedral of a tent.
The wind, rain and nice people pretty much summed up the rest of the week. The camp site turned into a bog in places, cars got stuck and tents submerged and so were lifted up and re-sited on drier ground. I still had no coat and so had to use my Kentwell cloak to Nic’s amusement. More than once during the week we thought “Let’s go home” particularly as this was by then our second week of camping and so we were all starting to fray around the edges. But then this turned to “We’ll leave tomorrow unless the weather improves” and we limped through the week like that – the bad weather being outweighed by the nice people.
There was the customary trip to Africa Alive, which was nice as ever (plus had the added attraction of being less boggy than the camp site). There was also the customary tie-dying (the weather held off just long enough) which was also good.
On a couple of nights the rain was joined by very strong winds. One of these nights produced a hole in the tent! We had a folding-up set of metal shelves to put food on, and the wind blew the side of the tent inwards so much and so hard that it impaled itself on a bolt holding the shelves together. The ever-helpful Beans produced a set of patches in the morning, which made us water-tight again.
The cabaret / talent show had the usual good efforts from the children. Our boys did some jokes, L sang Je Peux Frapper with some help from me and Jan sang a very appropriate song from Flanders and Swann (solo and a capella, which was very impressive).
We left a day early to avoid bad weather forecast for the final day, and fortunately the rain at the start of the day was blown off by the wind later so we packed a dry tent. There had been less milling about in a friendly sort of way by children and adults than last year, but it was worth enduring. Time for a better-drained camp site next year, I think though! Despite the weather we managed to take some photos – on Flickr as ever.
UPDATE: I added a bit to the title to make it more accurate!
I thought you looked very dashing in the cloak!
You did swashbuckle and swish delightfully. Apologies to Katy for misspelling her on my blog too 🙂
I also thought you looked very striking in that cloak. I tried to persuade Colin that he should get one too.