Firstly, for anyone new here – don’t be overly alarmed, Gary is the name of our gazebo. But within the context of injuries suffered by camping equipment, poor Gary is in a bad way. His first substantial injury was sustained last summer, but I patched him up using piece of string. Sadly a further worse injury was sustained this weekend!
Given it’s nearly Easter my neighbour and I were hosting an egg hunt in our gardens for our neighbours. Gary had the important role of keeping the rain off the hot cross buns! About 10 minutes before the guests were to arrive, I noticed Gary wasn’t looking too good!! Firm peggy of the guys sustained him through the morning, but with tears on two sides, I don’t think he can go up again without substantial repairs.
He served us faithfully throughout lockdown and for many camping trips and garden parties. He’s been up in the wind and the rain and the snow and the baking sun – and his insides have been smoked by our cooking fire! We’ve had good use out of him and I guess it’s to be expected that it’s taken its toll on him.
It looks like the roof canopy should easily detach from the airbeams, so replacing the canopy should be possible in theory. A practical problem might be that the Air Vale shelter has been discontinued, but we will see if we can source one somewhere. We’ll let you know how we get on.
The new camping season has arrived! So we thought it was time to try a new campsite – Sussex Topiary Campsite near Horsham.
The first question when we arrived is where is the topiary? There are trees, but we couldn’t see any pretty shaped ones! The second question was where’s Reception?! The first place we tried turned out to be a derelict shed! Turns out there’s a house amongst the static caravans that’s the Reception.
We arrived on a sunny day, but it had rained all week so the camping field was very boggy. Instead we were given a hard standing pitch.
The hard standing pitch was gravel and it was good as it meant we didn’t get muddy. However, we don’t have any hard standing pegs! We made do with what we had, but it was hard work to hammer them in with the mallet… and once they were in they didn’t necessarily stay there! When hammering the plastic pegs from our Kampa tent (AKA Alice) I managed to split one of them in two right down the middle!!
Needless to say we were the only tent on the site! There were half a dozen caravans who looked like they might be fairlly long-term residents. The caravan next to us had a good set up with a nice awning. Our neighbours on the other side weren’t doing so well & had keeled over!!
We didn’t use all of Alice’s humps, just the maim tent & the vestibule door. But we were still able to have a bedroom each, a palatial en suite in the middle hump and a kitchen area in the vestibule. The vestibule was just big enough for a kitchen table with our stove, two chairs & a coffee table. It was just as well, because it rained overnight & all the following morning!!
The site is well located to access footpaths so on the Saturday afternoon (when it wasn’t raining) we went for a walk to build our appetite for dinner. The Downs Link path is nearby and is a good path using what looks like an old railway track. Sadly the track back to the campsite wasn’t so good. A bit muddy, turned to very muddy…and then to completely flooded quagmire! There was no way I could get through in my walking shoes, but the other goat had her wellies on, so she sloshed through to look for alteratives. I thought she’d disappeared completely, but she eventually reappeared having found an alternative route – through a field & over an electric fence!!!
Sunday morning we hunkered down in tent waiting for the rain to stop and enjoying the slower pace of life that camping enforces. When the rain stopped we moved to sitting outside by a fire waiting for the tent to dry.
I was really pleased that even though Alice is made of fabric, she dried out pretty quickly. I’d packed towels so we we were able to wipe down the remaining wetness on her windows to pack her away. I bought her with a seperate footprint groundsheet so that means the bottom of the tent stays clean & dry for packing away.
Overall we feel much refreshed for our trip and excited that the camping season has returned. The campsite is in need of some TLC in terms of cleaning & upkeep, but has potential…we’ll share our scores soon.
Last weekend’s adventure was planned to start in civilisation, so I thought I ought to clean my walking boots to look vaguely respectable! Although I’m always careful to dry my boots, I rarely do anything else & they usually bear the muddy souvenir of the last adventure. Consequently it had been a long time since the tread on the sole had been visible, so I got a nasty surprise to see that the outer sole had worn away on one heel. There was a hole where I could see through to the spongy inner layer of the sole.
I love my scarpa boots they are leather & goretex (taking no chances!) and extremely comfortable. My first thought was to get them re-heeled, but I’m not sure that’s possible due to the spongy layer. I also had to acknowledge that the leather on the top was showing signs of cracking.
They’ve done me well, I’ve walked hundreds of miles in them & only once had a blister. I guess I have to accept its time to start looking for a new pair. In the meantime I intend to wear them entirely into the ground.
Towards the end of last weekend’s walk I was faced with a long stretch of path that resembled a steam!
It was so deep I had to walk on tip toes to avoid the water over topping my boots…but do you know, even with the cracks & worn soles, my toes were toasty & dry. Grateful to my good old faithful walking boots!
Yesterday I received a mystery gift from a friend. She’d brought it back for me as a souvenir from her holiday, and she wanted me to guess what it was… could you guess?!
It’s the size that fits into the palm of my hand. I worked out that the black bits on the corners were little stoppers which opened. I read that it said ‘light my fire’ on it… but I could think what it could have to do with fires. I was stumped.
I asked for a clue and she made it do this:
… are you any the wiser? The lid opens and its got three little compartments inside.
The last clue is that two of the black corner stoppers have on them the letters P and S.
Shall I tell you?!
It’s a camping salt and pepper shaker! Isn’t it a fantastic gift for a girl who love camping?!!
Suggestions welcome for what spice/condiment I should put in the third compartment!
We’re conscious we haven’t blogged for a while. Sorry!
We have done a few more sections of the Greensands Way, we’ve just not been very good about telling you!
But for the new year we’ve another challenge we’re tackling simultaneously – walking the River Meon. You can read about more about this, and our first section where we went to find the river’s source, on our new River Meon walk page.
Who would have thought a short walk in the Surrey countryside could take in so much, but we came across all this and more on the last section of the Greensands Way we walked. Read about it here.
Confesssion… it was actually a little while ago we walked this section. We had hoped to camp at the coast this weekend, but the high winds meant this wasn’t sensible. Instead, we are walking the next part of the Greensands Way, which made us realise we are behind with the blogging!!
You might remember a ridiculous song about Alice the Camel having five humps that you sang as a child? (If not here’s a demonstration we’ve found you on YouTube!!!)… well our Alice also has five humps!! Or at least sometimes – other times she only has 3 or 4!
In this picture she has all her humps – the main tent which comes with a sort of veranda, an additional canopy extension and a vestibule. The additional bits all just zip on so you can add them or not depending on the space you need for that particular trip. Just as in the song, Alice might only have 4 humps sometimes!!
In theory you could probably just keep adding more & more canopy extensions – but we tend to think that 5 humps is big enough… especially when there’s only usually 2 people sleeping inside!!
We’ve recently been telling you about Alice the Palace our Kampa Hayling tent. Well in keeping with her royal title, Alice likes to travel in style!!
Being pretty big and being made of polycotton rather than just polyester, she is pretty heavy. The stronger goat can just about manouvre her, but only with the aid of the Alice’s travel carriage – a bag designed for the Vango Airbeam tent!
Although not designed for the Kampa tent, this bag is ideal – it is big enough to be able to roll Alice into it without too much trouble. There are seatbelts (well straps!) to compress her down a bit, but best of all there are wheels. She can be wheeled from the car, straight down the driveway and into the garage.
It’s definitely worth doing some research and not just going with the packing solutions offered by your particular tent manafacturer.
In the post about our recent camping trip, we promised to introduce you to Alice properly. Well here she is in all her beauty at Pit Hill campsite:
Some of you might actually remember her arrival. She is a Kampa Hayling 4 Classic in polycotton. For a large tent, she is pretty easy to put up as she is inflatable and we have an electric pump and battery pack, so we don’t even need to pump manually!
What’s with her name? Well, of all our tents she is by far the most luxurious. We found ourselves describing her as a palace – so when we were trying to think of a name for her we decided Alice the Palace had a nice ring to it!
We’ll look forward to introducing her more fully over the next few blog posts.
Camping season has begun!!We are currently enjoying coffee & cake by a fire to take off the chill in the air.
The we managed to get the tent up before the rain, and it stopped to enable us to go for a walk & cook dinner on the fire last night. However everything is muddy! Good job we packed our wellies!!
It wasn’t too cold overnight…especially if you have double thermals on, carpets & down sleeping bags.
Embrace your inner goat 