We swam in the sea, scrambled on cliffs, hunted for fossils, cooked on a camp fire, went on bike rides and fished in rock pools all the stuff of the classic camping holiday. If I'm honest there was also an element of re-living my own childhood holidays on the same stretch of coast.
With the two babies it was exhausting at times. Each night once Noami and I had got the kids bathed in the stak-a-box and into their sleeping bags we managed only a few pages of our respective holiday reading before our eyelids began to get heavy and our tired heads started to nod.
After five days in Dorset at Eweleaze farm with it's anything goes vibe, we headed to the far more prim and proper Round Hill in the New Forest. With its hot showers and pitches sheltered from the wind this was luxury after the farm. We enjoyed two days here including a lovely day with my parents with whom we shared a pub lunch and a BBQ in the rain - great fun!
We had planned to stay here for a further two and a half days but some extreme weather had other ideas. When we finally got home my facebook status described the events in the following way...
"1:00am - "jonny there's water in the tent" .1:30am - getting everything up off the ground. 2:00am - "I think this is our holiday over" 3:30am - driving the kids and what we could rescue back to Petworth. 5:30am heading back to the New Forest to take the tent down. 8:00am - heading back home with lots of soggy stuff :-("
At 1:30am with Cadan being his most mature and helpful, saving ourselves from the rising waters all seemed quite exciting. It was only in the quite literal cold light of day - 7am - when I returned to the tent to find the boys toys bobbing helplessly in the flood water that a lump came to my throat.
For a moment I caught the tiniest of tiny glimpses of what it must feel like for those in the Pakistan floods or any disaster where a home is destroyed and life turned upside down, and resolved to be grateful that I have a home to go back to and any sort of holiday.
Packing and leaving was a stressful task and now we're faced with the same task in reverse with the added stress of every item of clothing and bedding being covered in smelly flood water. Eight loads of washing later an we're almost back to normal with just the tent still to dry.
All in all one exhausting but ultimately rewarding adventure as I had anticipated.
