Monday 4 August 2008

Bonding with Nature Ep 1

Now there is no better way to bond with good old mother nature than to go camping and despite popular belief there are many beautiful places in Great Britain to go and bond.



For about 2 months I have been promising Camille I would write a blog about our camping adventure and many times I have sat down to enlighten the world about our adventures but every single time I have been drawn in to the evil world that is FB ( for those of you who live in a bubble that is the cool way of saying Face Book) so time has passed and no story has gone to press.




I was going through my photos on my comp and came across a couple of camping ones and they made me giggle so here I am sitting at my comp sharing the love, here is a summarised account of our camping trips.



So our first trip was to the New Forest which is south somewhere I believed it was in between Southampton and Portsmouth but I found out very recently that my geographical knowledge of the UK is completely crap and I am completely wrong so all I can tell you is that it is somewhere South.



OK firstly I would like you to take a look at the 2 pictures below and try and figure out how long Camille and I went camping for, bear in mind that the stuff in the car is only Camille's and mine and as you can see it is a big ass car.

























Well I am pretty positive that you did not say one weekend, O yes Camille and I only went camping for one weekend, arrive on the Friday afternoon and leave on the Sunday morning.



So we arrive at the camp site 3 hrs later than we planned who only knows why, Tesco has a lot to answer for I actually thing its like a time warp thingy you go in for a pint of milk and leave with enough food for England and seem to have aged 4 yrs Hmmm they don't mention that on there TV ads.



So we spend the next hour standing in what could be a good spot and we stand there discussing its pros and cons and whether we should move. we then duly erected Camille's new fantabulous (new word) tent from Halfords (for those who don't know Halfords is predominantly a bike and car accessories dealer) thinking that we have managed to get a fantastic bargain and no one would know, only then to find out that the thing had in massive Orange letters CHEAPO (halfords) written all over it.



** i would just like to add at this point that i am not complaining about the tent it was to be my home for the next 2 days and if it wasn't for Camille purchasing it i would be sleeping under the stars and i must say it did a grand job at keeping us safe**



Below is a picture of our fantabulous pad




Note the homely touches, the welcome mat and the 2 homing beacons, Camille is the one on the left looking fabulous as ever ;) and yes you are not seeing things that is not me on the right that is Camille's sister in law Hege (sorry if that's spelt incorrectly) the reason she is looking so fresh and relaxed is because for the past 3 hours Camille and i have been putting up there mansion of a tent and when i say mansion i mean it! this thing could home 4 large African communities in comfort. the entire cast of the Cirque du Soliel would be lost in its spaciousness.


After Camille and i managed to put up our tent with shall we say somewhat unhelpful instructions we for some reason offered to put up Camille's brothers mansion as he was arriving later with a bad back. so off we go out it comes from the bag we look at each other with the OMG expression and duly have a ciggy break! To add to our enjoyment it starts raining (not funny) so off we go at a run to get this thing up with minimal damage it stops raining thankfully and a few of the other campers arrive Camille goes off to do the polite thing and say hello etc i stop for a little breather and then the wind picks up and with it the tent goes up i have to do this Rambo commando roll skid thing manage to catch the tent and prevent it from moving sites without us, the nice guy talking to Camille shouts over "well caught do you need any help?", here is me clinging on to the tent with all my might muscles aching sweat dripping from my brow and what does Camille say "na she'll be alright" cheers bud!! ;)



When you go camping i have a firm belief that you have to go for a walk and see the country side you are living in and do the whole Ray Mears bonding with mother nature thing by this i don't mean eating leaves and mud I'm not that hard core, so after a leisurely morning i manage to persuade Camille to come with me, not an easy feat let me tell you. we head off in a direction we think is the way out to go and buy a map from the reception, i use the word map very loosely here because i think my 1yr old nephew could actually draw a more accurate one.



Camille was in charge of the map reading and with in the first 10 Min's Camille had convinced herself that we were going to get eaten by wild animals because we had been walking for days and there was no hope of rescue. this continued for the remainder of the walk, we walked a few miles and it was very pleasant we saw some dear and a really ugly huge bug thing that could be a wasp but i think it was to big eating a dragon fly, o nature is so warm a fuzzy.


O yea and we came across a few bogs Camille refusing to get her boots muddy she would spend hours trying to find a way around the mud, i managed to get myself completely stuck and surrounded balancing on a log and having no idea how to get out, in the end i had to do the whole if you run very fast you wont really touch the ground and then you wont get muddy scientifically proven method which i then found out doesn't actually work!! ( 2 months later and i still haven't cleaned my boots)


we arrived back at camp after about 2 hours and with every telling of the story Camille adds about 2 mile to the walk, in the end i think we did a 42 mile hike over mountains, shark infested waters and snake ridden bogs passing 2 communities of cannibals and only managing to escape by the skin of our teeth and having to teach them how to make fire with 2 boy scouts.


we were both a bit sore the next day but i thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially meeting the cannibals.


I will post the Wales camping trip soon,


Kat the cannibal trainer

Forgotten Youth

Have you ever wondered why children would always rather draw on a freshly painted or tiled wall than they would draw on a piece of paper?

For those of you with children i am sure this is one of your nightmares, taking your children to visit a friend or relative and the one second you take your eyes off them they have managed to pull a big black marker out of somewhere and started drawing a master piece over the fresh clean wall only to come running to you ten minutes later to show you what they have done. For those of you who don't have children but have friends who have i know its a nightmare trying to keep one constant eye on them and on the draw that stores all of your pens.


Now that we are all grown adults we have all grown out of this and it would never cross our minds to even think about drawing on a wall.

I was happily sitting minding my own business when this big black marker jumped into my hand and was shouting at me to start drawing on the wall.... so i did what any grown adult with a rational mind would do.

I drew a treasure island all over my mothers bathroom wall.
I can really see the attraction kids have to drawing all over the wall. we should all have a wall dedicated to drawing all over. I just hope that when my mum comes home from holiday she knows a way to get permanent pen off!


Happy Drawing