A Soggy Camping Trip

You will undoubtedly have noticed a general dearth of entries over the previous months. Reasons for this are two-pronged. One is we have been nose to the grindstone at work and generally in life and have therefore not been out and about with our usual verve and purpose. The second is actually for the same reason as above, only in the sense that even when we have gotten out and about we haven’t had the chance to edit photos/write up the blog entry. However, we have reached Bank Holiday weekend and finally found some time... so here is the first of a few posts about our summer adventures.

Having had very little holiday this year and with finally being able to hire a car, we decided on a long weekend of camping in the Lake District. This is an area of the UK we had not been to before and well, we still haven’t. The weather through June and July was pretty much perfect – sunny, dry and warm. That all changed the week leading up to our planned weekend at the end of July. The forecast for the Lake District was torrential rain all weekend, so we cast about for other options, settling on Snowdonia in Northern Wales.

We set out in partially cloudy conditions and as we moved ever closer to the Welsh border the clouds darkened, and then opened. First a mere drizzle, turning progressively harder as we wound through the green country roads of Snowdonia National Park. It was gorgeous scenery, though we couldn’t see too much of it through the sheets of rain.

We arrived at our campsite, Hafod Y Llan, at the base of Snowdon and ostensibly next to a ‘babbling’ brook. Yeah, not so much babbling as cacophonous, but it was surrounded by a lush, green moss covering every rock and tree trunk.

The campsite was nice, even if the rain required a bit of improvisation on our tent. Deciding that cooking on a propane stove in the pouring rain wasn’t going to work and desperately needing to be in out of the rain we went to a nearby pub and went from being soaked to slightly damp in the course of our meal.

The rain had stopped by the time we were done and back to the campsite, but that just encouraged the midges to come out in force, so we retreated to our tent for an early night and the hope of better conditions come morning. The next morning however we woke up to more rain. It broke long enough to let us cook our breakfast but we ended up eating in the tent as the clouds opened once more.

Sick of sitting in the rain and being in no mood to further exhaust ourselves hiking up a wet and muddy mountain, we voted two to one to get back in the car and drive further south in the hopes of some better weather and a change of scenery. I say two to one because Guinness was not real keen on the car. He used to love our old Jetta in Chicago and would cram his substantial frame into the back window sill and very comfortably spend many hours sleeping up there on our myriad trips. This car did not have a similar window sill for him and so he spent all weekend standing and panting in semi-agitation whenever in the car. Not great for all involved.

We wandered over to the coast and had a nice picnic on a rocky beach, with Guinness swimming in the waves for the first time since North Carolina all those years back. Suffice to say, he enjoyed himself!

We wound up in a delightful little campsite just outside Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales and had a nice meal and then got a roaring campfire going – before the rains returned. Unwilling to turn away from our campfire early, we huddled under the umbrella for thirty minutes for the rain to stop, before finally turning in.

The morning greeted us with more rain – I am convinced by the way that it never rained in the Lake District but rather moved south with us all weekend – and we once more got wet taking the campsite apart. More driving greeted us, some of it along rather tiny farm tracks up the moorland of Brecon Beacons.

We did get out and hike to the top of a hill just because it was there – even stayed dry on that excursion.

Further driving, complete with panting dog in the back seat, brought us through the Forest of Dean and to the edge of the Cotswolds. We thought we would have a poke around Bourton-on-the-Wold, but apparently half of England had a similar idea – circus only begins to describe the scene – so instead we just cracked on home.

The peaceful, relaxing weekend we had envisaged it was not. Too mobile, as we always seem to be, and too wet. That being said, it was great to have the freedom of a car and we really enjoyed seeing some scenery of the UK that we had not been able to enjoy yet. Our second night with the campfire was great as well and at the end of the day, we hadn’t been to work on Friday, which was always going to be a plus!

To sum up: camping in Britain requires a heck of a lot of good waterproof kit, a car with a back window sill and more than three days. Lessons learned for next time, which there will definitely be.