Non-stop visiting

Time to head south.  First a visit to Connor. A bit earlier than normal for Christmas this year but we’ve got to fit so many visits in before we cross the channel.

I made the mistake of thinking that we could visit Connor, have lunch with Iain’s dad and move to another campsite in the New Forest in the same day and arrive before dark. What I didn’t appreciate was the lovely Somerset and Hampshire roads.   The plan was to stay in Bawdrip and get Iain’s dad to pick us up to go to Cheddar to see Connor.  We pulled into the campsite and both said “We’ve been here before”.  Indeed we had but we visit so many campsites that sometimes you forget where they are.

Anyway as often happens, Connor slept through our visit, but it’s important to see that he’s being well cared for.

We left Bawdrip at 2.15 in the hope that we could get to the New Forest before dark – pushing it a bit. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my passenger hates gadgets and thinks that you can just let the sat nag get you there.  NO you need a plan as well for when it doesn’t feel right. Well the sat nag wanted me to pull off the road to Southampton and go to Ringwood and the navigator said to do that.  Well I immediately felt that something was wrong as I had picked the campsite because it was on the Salisbury to Southampton road – nowhere near Ringwood.  I pulled over and checked the map and decided that we needed to turn around and go back or we would be travelling on B roads all the way there.  Well as I’ve said before, turning around a 30 foot motorhome is not an easy task. This was not helped by my navigator who said – it’s ok after the second car.  Unfortunately I didn’t know which was the first car so I asked if the car that had just passed us was the second car.  After the next comment from Mr Right I nearly kicked him out of the van to walk the rest of the way.  The comment was (and he’s never going to be able to forget it) “What part of second car didn’t you understand?” Well I was furious, it was getting dark and we had ages to go and I really deserved a comment like that – NOT!!!!!

Having still to drive through the centre of Salisbury we arrived at the campsite well after dark, to find a pitch black lane with a closed gate at the end and not one light to be seen.  That’s one of those moments when you hope that you put the right co-ordinates into the sat nag!!!! And that you did book at that camp site, not another one!!!

After a phone call we were let in.  I parked extremely badly across three pitches and basically dumped it there for the night. I’d had enough. 

Of course after a night’s sleep all seems a lot better.  The campsite was actually quite nice and we had a pleasant walk into Nomansland which was in the New Forest.  I also managed to get my washing done.  This is something that I’m  having to get used to.  When on holiday I would store up the washing and take it home.  But now this is home and I have to remember to do the washing.

A couple of days relaxation and we were ready for more of our visiting onslaught before we left for France.