Category: Campervan

We have had some amazing weather so far this month and last week we decided to make the most of the sunshine and squeeze in one last camping trip. We decided last Monday afternoon and after a quick look online, booked a pitch on a Haven site near Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire and then packed the van as quickly as we could! We arrived quite late after a 4.5 hour drive and were shown to our pitch (in the dark!) Luckily we still had time to get a takeaway pizza as we hadn’t got much with us!

We usually stick to much smaller sites in the summer but at this time of year it’s nice to have some extra facilities and it was a bargain too at £36 for 4 nights (including electric!) We’d not been to this area before and the site is right next to the beach.

The next morning we went for a long walk on the beach (it is massive!) and then into Mablethorpe. The weather was fab – very sunny and very windy too but not really cold. There was loads of ‘sea buckthorn’ – the berries are a lovely colour (I’ve eaten ‘sea buckthorn’ ice cream once – very nice!)

We stayed for 4 days, mostly sitting out in the sunshine in the afternoons doing a bit of knitting. We were very lazy and ate at the onsite restaurant in the evenings. We ate out at a place called the ‘Fat Seagull’ one lunchtime (it’s near Sandilands) and had the most amazing homemade sausages! We also had some superb cheesecake at Lady B’s Cupcakery 🙂

Pippin having fun on the beach:

It goes without saying that Mablethorpe is a ‘traditional’ seaside town – with amusements!

I’m pretty sure that will be the last of the camping posts for this year! We’ve been so lucky with the weather and had some great trips, which was just what we needed post-shop. I promise a change in post content soon! We are going to be trying out something new in the next month or so (you’ll have to wait a while longer for news) and I’m also going to be spending some more time getting some of my patterns ready to publish now that the weather is a bit too cold for camping!

We had a really nice couple of weeks in Wales last month and apart from a couple of super rainy days, we had great weather! Unlike our Scottish trip, we booked all but our first night’s camping in advance (and most of the sites we stayed at were pretty full due to it being school holiday time). We spent a peaceful first night in a car park in Brecon – most Powys council car parks allow you to stay overnight (for 1 night) so we started our trip a day earlier than we originally planned, which meant we could take our time getting to our first campsite near St David’s.

St David’s cathedral

We took advantage of the lovely weather and did quite a bit of walking, including some parts of the coastal path. This was taken on a walk around Dinas head:

The views were amazing!

Pippin enjoyed some time digging for rocks on the beach…

He likes to hunt for them in streams too (strange dog!)

We ate some fab food – I think Pizza Tipi (Cardigan) was one of our favourite places.

I’ve recently changed my camera kit – as much as I loved my full frame Nikon and amazing fast lenses, I decided I wanted something that I could actually manage to carry around all day without being crippled by the weight! I have now got an Olympus OMD EM1 and I’m loving it. It’s a great camera – very light (compared to the Nikon) but extremely capable and there are a lot of excellent lenses to choose from too. I tried to remember to take shots for a panorama each day. These were all handheld (and put together in Lightroom).

Rather appropriately, the wet weather caught up with us for our stay at Tyn Cornel campsite which is next to the River Tryweryn and just a short walk from the National White Water Centre. Despite the rain (lots of rain!) we had a great time watching the action on the river.

Pippin made a friend!

Another highlight was walking over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (not recommended if you are afraid of heights, although I have to say I’m not that keen but I found it ok)

We came home via Shropshire where we spent a relaxing couple of days with Gretel – we ate too much and talked a lot and I had the honor of receiving some 1:1 painting tuition!