Moving East

Well that was the plan, only we decided another night at Haughton, Staffordshire, would be good, to have a rest and dinner in the local pub. Well, we were feeling rather flush after two days paid work. While we were there, we had an afternoon at RAF Cosford. Free! We like Free!! Some great planes there, good place to take children on a cold wet day, as huge displays under cover.

The next day we headed to Stamford, an absolute gem of a town that I accidentally visited last November and had vowed I would take Mike there. I did and he loved it, it’s like a smaller version of Bath and if you want to do a day of Christmas Shopping, you will find some excellent, out of the ordinary presents among the dozens of independent traders there, hardly a chain store in sight and well worth a day trip.

That evening we were booked into a site opposite the sailing club at Rutland Water. Why are sailing folk so up their own arses? Mike went into the Club to see where we were supposed to park and got short shrift, even though the site is obviously linked in some way to the club.

There was this field of caravans, all of which had obviously been there for ages, most with large awnings, yet not a single one was occupied. We fitted ourselves into a smallish gap between two vans, not wanting to be in the middle of the field on our own.

Had a lovely walk around the village of Edith Weston and part of the reservoir. A lovely, elderly lady came out of her house and insisted on giving us some apples from her garden.

We were cooking a large joint of beef for dinner that night and I decided to go the whole hog, homemade Yorkshire pudding too. It was lovely!

Later I did make a joke about the niggle in the back of my mind.  Where was everyone? To whom did all these caravans belong and where were they? Maybe we were about to be the latest victim of a Bates Motel type site owner?

We awoke hale and hearty the next morning and apart from a visit from a jumped up git from the Sailing Club who told us we should have parked in the middle of the field, there was no problem.