Summer Emotions

This weekend my girl turned 11; her last birthday before heading off to secondary school in September. These two events are in no doubt causing me to be very emotional at the moment. Year on year the children's birthdays set me off on a path of mixed emotions and I become an absolute nightmare to live with whilst I deal with it. We are also at the start of the last week of the school year and I'm getting emotional about everything; the girl's leaver's assembly on Thursday, finishing this academic year of yoga teaching, realising the holiday is only a week away and I'm meant to be running the Norwich 10k race in less than 3 weeks and I can only just walk on a knackered achilles, realising that, despite a positive physio appointment 2 weeks ago, I will have to shelve the planned marathon in September. Then I think to myself that in the grand scheme of things these are only little stresses and I should do the simple thing of 'snapping out of it'. Sometimes I can but sometimes I can't. I am quite an emotional thing with quite a fiery streak - just ask the husband. As cliche as it sounds, running is my therapy - well one of them, yoga being the other. Running gives me time, it gives me fresh air, it gives me exercise, it clears my mind, it makes me feel great. Simply put, not being able to do it is really getting me down. Now I could just leave it at that but I do have a positive side to me. I am telling myself it could be way worse than having to shelve some races and take it easy. So I'm going to now look ahead to the summer and think of the positives!

In less than two weeks we'll be taking our annual trip down the A350 to Dorset for the tenth installment of Camp Bestival! This will be our eighth Camp Bestival and that simple fact obviously means it is an event that as a family we would highly recommend - here was last year's review.

I may not be running there this year but I'm going to take the annual trip east along the joyous M4, M25 & M11 to my home county of Norfolk - the thought of the Norfolk coast is already making me smile!

   

The wide open space of Greenacres needs to be booked for some family chill-out camping time.

Soul Circus gives me my yoga festival hit for the summer. I am so looking forward to three days of rolling out my yoga mat in the amazing tents and chilling in some pure indulgent me-time. Last year's inaugural event was fantastic and I reviewed it here.

And there is also the simple fact that alarm clocks can be switched off, school bags can be hidden under the stairs and we can just chill with the family.

So, and I do need to remind myself of this, there's a lot to be positive about.

x x x

Greenacres Camping

Camping is always high on our agenda in the summer holidays and this year we decided to head back to the glorious Greenacres Camping, just an hour's drive away, in the Somerset countryside near Pilton. This site to me is just perfect; flat, huge pitches, camp fires, hot showers, tents and campervans only and simple! The prices are reasonable too at £9 a night for adults and £4.50 for children - with no extra charges for gazebos, awnings or big tents. We arrived early Sunday afternoon and was greeted at Reception by the lovely owner Mary, who remembers all her past guests, and with a quick reminder of where our pitch was we were good to go.

As my car is teeny the husband brought the camping gear in his van, helped us pitch up and then left us to it - the joys of running your own business hey?! The pitch gave us plenty of space for our Outwell Montana 6 tent and car with ample room left to spread out away from neighbouring pitches for those quiet moments when you just want to chill outside your tent. Being at the end of the site we were away from the play park and amenities block but this meant no passing foot traffic and a quieter camping experience - and now the children are 9 and 7 they have increased independence and confidence to head to these areas without me holding their hand and watching their every move.

Every camping trip we take I see a big change in the children and Greenacres has been part of their camping experiences since they were 3 and 1. The space and safety of the site has allowed them to explore and step away from the grown ups, it has made them more confident and just being outdoors in the fresh air 24/7 allows them to completely switch off with no mention of television, iPads and tablets. This to me is pure bliss.

The site has a play area with swings, slide, see saw and play houses and The Lazy Dayzee Crew come on site a couple of days a week to do craft activities in their lovely belle tent.

The site is well maintained with Mary and Duncan ever present around Reception and the amenities block constantly mopping out showers, replenishing toilet rolls and keeping an eye on things. 

The weather was varied with us waking up on Monday morning to heavy rain but we were prepared. I had my lovely new Helly Hansen Seven J jacket and Veierland wellies which kept me super dry on the walks to the toilets, shower block and washing up area.

The rest of our trip was dry and sunny which enabled us to have a campfire every night. I was a little bit anxious about this having never started a fire before but Zippo sent me a rather useful kit that helped us to safely start the fires. The cedar wood fire starter was fantastic and so much nicer than the foil wrapped supermarket ones.

Greenacres hires out fire pits with wood, firelighters and kindling with prices starting at £20. We had our old BBQ pan so just bought some wood from the helpful Duncan at Reception - £10 for a big bag of logs and kindling. You will see Duncan driving his mower and trailer around the site regularly dropping off fire pits and wood but I handily had a strong seven year old boy to do the carrying for me!

Sitting round the campfire each night with the children is going to be a memory that will last forever; toasting marshmallows, sipping wine and hot chocolate, watching the flames dance, burning sticks. All simple things.

The site is well placed to visit the nearby towns of Wells and Glastonbury as well as the tourist spots at Cheddar and Wookey Hole. We also headed further afield down to Montacute House on the rainy Monday and across to Brean Down for a lovely sunny day of play on the beach on Tuesday. Wednesday we climbed Glastonbury Tor, wandered around the beautiful shops buying incense sticks and essential oils then drove up to Wells for an ice cream in front of the Cathedral.

We were very sad to leave on Thursday, although chuffed that the weather forecast of torrential downpours from 4a.m. were completely wrong. The husband arrived to take our camping gear and Duncan was doing his rounds on his mower freshening up the pitches for new arrivals and it was a cheerful goodbye and hope to see you again.

We definitely hope to see you again Greenacres and we will be back for a bit of slow living camping.

Picture kindly taken by our friendly Dutch neighbours!

x x x

Disclaimer; Helly Hansen and Zippo sent me products to review and as always words and opinions are my own. We paid ourselves to camp at Greenacres and just wanted to share their lovely site with you!

Summer Bucket List 2013 {update}

So, the summer holidays are over and I thought I would see how much of our Summer Bucket List we actually achieved. We gathered our ideas back in June with the idea being if it was on the list it would get done! Well, did we do it?!
Here's some evidence...
Go to Camp Bestival:

 

Camp at Greenacres:

Go stargazing:

Go to a beach:

Go to Norfolk:

Fly a kite:

Watch the sunset:

Visit a castle:

Go on a nature walk:

Build a garden fort:

Visit a museum {The MShed, Bristol}:

Here are the facts!...

22 smileys vs 13 sad faces. Not too bad but not great.
The excuses?!:
Of the sad faces some were financial as I left these to the end of the summer and my holiday budget was kind of gone. Also have you seen zoo prices? They are high!
The camp fire was bad planning on my part - forgetting to book a fire pit at Greenacres.
Camping in the garden didn't happen due to this and being too shook up to camp out there.
The rest? Well, we have had such a jam packed summer I'm not feeling too bad about them and some can easily be passed over to an Autumn Bucket List!
How was your summer? Do everything as planned?!

Update: I've just looked back at our achievements and realised they are pretty much all outdoors. So, because of that I'm linking this up to the awesome Country Kids. Go check it out!

x x x

Camping at Greenacres {aka space to clear your head}

At the beginning of the summer the children created a Summer Bucket List upon which was the wish to go camping at the amazing Greenacres Campsite near Pilton in Somerset. I say amazing because Greenacres takes it back to basics and above all gives the children that all important space; space to run, space to play, space to be free. I'm going to add to that - it gives the adults that all important space; space to run, space to play, space to be free and space to clear the head....

 

This trip gave me the added confidence that we did it alone, just me and the kiddies. We demonstrated excellent teamwork at putting up the tent...

#ISpy....K

So, it is the penultimate week of Mum Of One's #ISpy linky and we have been given the letter K.

As soon as I knew this was the letter some images popped into my head from three summers ago when Edith had just turned 3. For her birthday treat she wanted to go camping at her favourite site, Greenacres near Pilton, Somerset and for all you happy campers out there I highly recommend it.

There is loads of safe space for the children to run and play and that's just what Edith did.

So, here's an easy one for you.

What K do you spy?

x x x