Swanage: 03/08/06—06/08/06

It is starting to become normal for the Large family to camp–out (not in the pink sense) with the NGF and his bunch of rufty–tufty diving club cohorts. This is probably the fifth time we have been on holiday with people who like nothing more than getting up at 4am to get the right kind of water to swim about in. Luckily none of this stuff has been any encouragement to me and I still subscribe to WC Fields motto that you shouldn’t trust water, fish have sex in it.

This turned out to be just as well as the campsite had the worst showers that we have so far encountered. It could’ve be due to the popularity of the site at the height of the season but they didn’t seem to have enough showers for the amount of campers. The block (which included the toilets) was shut for two hours every lunchtime for cleaning — not the best time if you have a lot of coffee with your lunch — but never really looked any better for it. The Wife said the ‘Ladies’ had a few cubicles with door and flooding problems as well.

It also lacked a reasonable amount of sinks to wash your dishes in (i.e. they had one).

The best part about the site was the railway line that was about 40 foot from where we were camping. No really. It was the best! For a start the trains that went by were steam engines! It was like a scene from the Railway children, when a shout of ‘here comes a train’ would go up and everyone would start waving as the train blew it’s whistle while it headed towards Corfe Castle.

Other than that, for the money, the site was pretty average — it did the job.

Swanage is a nice little seaside town with cute shops and great fish and chippies. The weather was good and we only needed a little bit of beach for the kids to wade around in the water. Other children were trying their luck at crabbing while their parents were no doubt wondering what to do with the blighter’s if they ever caught one.

man with lamb

Family–fun was to be had at the Putlake Adventure Farm. The Girl enjoyed (as always) seeing the horses, calves and lambs. While I enjoyed seeing the NGF getting up close and personal with a lamb (see picture). And not a wellie–boot in sight! The trip ended with me chasing The Girl around one of those kids ball–pit–things.

After breaking camp and starting back we decided to check out the Studland beaches. This turned out to be a little difficult unless you were willing to pay £7 for parking! We found out (after trying many different car parks along the beach that this was the price and that was that. This is due to the National Trust owning this part of the Isle of Purbeck. After what seemed like a long time in a hot, heavily loaded car, I finally gave in and paid the money.

The beach was worth it. It was lovely. I can safely say that it was the nicest beach I have been on excluding those in New Zealand. The sand was soft and golden and it had nice places to get refreshments from. The Girl was whooping it up to the point where, because the beach was so crowded, we had to tell her to take it easy so she didn’t kick sand over everybody.

I even broke the habit of a lifetime and agreed to go on a pedal-lo. This was hard work but fun. The Girl was desperate to jump into the water when we were out to the far buoy and found that holding on to the back of a pedal-lo was a very frothy affair ;-)

The journey back home was like most post–holiday trips long, drawn–out and in this case hot. I love holidays.

Posted on 13/08/06 03:38 PM by Jack Large

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