First task of the day was to drop the dogs off at the kennels. I put their food, toys and blankets into the car then ushered the girls in. They didn’t need much coaxing.
On arrival, Gabby trotted straight in but now Misty needed that coaxing – but not too much.
Back home via the petrol station in Coleshill.
Then the fun began. We had a load of stuff to go into the back the car but with plenty of shoving it was all in AND I could still see out of the back window.
I remembered to reset the car computer so I’d have a record of how far we’d travelled.
Around ten, we departed, heading for the M42.
Traffic was fine with no hold ups and we were soon pulling into Michael’s Wood services to answer the call of nature and grab a bite.
Glancing at the Geocaching app. I noticed a cache in the middle of the bridge over the motorway. Sue took our goodies back to the car and I set off in pursuit of the cache.
To claim a find, there were some numbers stamped onto the bridge which needed to be sent to the cache owner along with a photo from the bridge.
I failed to find any numbers but here’s my photo …
Suitably refreshed, we pressed on down the M5.
It was around this point that Sue asked, “You did put the gas bottle in, didn’t you?”
“Oooops !”
After a bit of discussion / argument we hatched a plan. We could nip into a large supermarket and purchase an electric kettle and it we were lucky a cheap portable stove. That was THAT problem sorted.
“I think that we may have forgotten the plates and bowls!”
Again, the supermarket could help with that.
We left the M5 after Taunton and headed west along the North Devon Link Road until the outskirts of Barnstaple where I spotted an ASDA sign which was followed to a big supermarket and fuel station.
We soon found some cheap crockery and an electric kettle for all of eight quid. We also picked up a single burner portable stove. Disaster averted.
It wasn’t far from ASDA to the campsite where we were shown to our pitch.
The tent went up a lot easier than last time and we were soon putting in all the other paraphernalia to make our home for the week. It was hot inside the tent while setting up and afterward we decided that if we’d opened some of the vents once the tent was up, it may have been more comfortable afterwards.
It’s a learning thing and next time we should be even better.
Dinner was an uninspiring but typical camping meal of sandwiches and Pot Noodle.
With no WiFi and a poor mobile signal, I had to piggyback off Sue’s phone (we’re on different networks for such a scenario) so that we could watch the end of the Tour de France on my iPad.