hi-de-hi

Sunday afternoon I decided that as I had another couple of days off there was nothing stopping me from booking myself in at a campsite for a couple of nights. I planned to stop half way to my parents and back either side of a visit there on Easter Monday. It is now Easter Monday and I'm back home. EGADS!

So yesterday afternoon I went and set up camp at a site about 1/3 of the way over to my parents house. My tent is ace, the sun was shining and the promise of sleeping out with my hound made me a very happy girl.

Until

I tried to get to sleep. It was very cold and Monty wanted to lie on my bed with me...which wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't have been on a campbed that's about as wide and as forgiving as a bean pole.

Add to that the fact that over and above the bird song and general happy outdoor noises, the A14 thundered past at very close proximity. I felt like I was on the hard shoulder. But it's going to get less busy as the night draws on isn't it?

After lying awake for a long time, Monty decided he wanted to go outside for a bit. No problem. He is on an extended lead that I hook round my foot so that he has a decent circle to trot around before he comes back in.

However

this field had rabbits and Monty loves rabbits. He loves them so much he wants to run after every single one just to be friends. He does this at considerable speed. So just as I'm dropping off to sleep he shoots off after the aforementioned bunny, hooking the lead over the top of the tent as he goes. As the lead tightens it pulls down on both my collapsable tent and ankle causing me to go from sound asleep to having my leg torn out of bed, wrenched through the open door and the tent simultaneously collapsing on my head. This happened more than once.

I continued to persevere. I put on jeans and another 2 pairs of t-shirts and waited for the traffic to ease on the A14.

It didn't.

By 4:15 I was seriously toying with the idea of packing up and doing a runner. But this kumquat is made of tougher stuff! 15 minutes more of tougher stuff to be precise. By half four I was legging it to and from the car to chuck in all my stuff and get the blazes out of there. Even if my parents were still in bed when I arrived and Norfolk was covered in snow then at least the madness inducing roar of traffic would have stopped and I could be cold in quiet.

They were up and about and I went straight to bed when I arrived!