The Festive Season

So Christmas and New Year were spent at home. Living in a not large house, with five people wasn’t easy, with different meals at different times, plus 7 cats and a huge dog. The weather was dreadful, so not much of a chance to get out on the long walks we’ve become used to and I had some sort of gastric bug for the best part of a week.

Getting back on the road, with that ever present proximity to the great outdoors, was looked forward to with relish.

First stop was a night at Bath, to see Mike’s daughter and her family, her husband was cooking us one of his excellent Chicken Thai Green Curries. We had a lovely evening and much laughter over old family events and photos, of which this is one. Chloe, who is now almost 19, was in hysterics over this one of her sitting on my lap.

I look like the Cuprinol Man!!

Saturday the 4^th January saw us on our way to Sandy Balls, in the New Forest. The rain seemed to have forgotten how to stop. Rivulets were running down most roads and dips were developing into pools, ponds, lakes even. We had to queue for some time, as traffic took it in turns to get through the shallowest part of this flood under a railway bridge. Some smaller cars had to turn round, knowing they wouldn’t make it.

Then we had a rainbow when we got to the Site.

The hour and a half journey took just over 2 hours and everywhere, the landscape was turning into a vast, watery waste.

Thankfully, Sandy Balls is on a hill, high above the River Avon, so as long as we could get there, we had no fears about the site being flooded.

As if we hadn’t seen enough water, as soon as we’d got set up, we took ourselves off to the swimming pool, with the added benefit of a sauna.

We are here for two weeks, time to relax and walk and swim off a few of those Christmas extra calories.

Today is the 6^th January and we only managed a shortish walk, due to the rain clouds that keep blowing up but from the viewpoints here, it was interesting to see just how flooded the river valley is.  Fingers crossed for an improvement in the weather later in the week, as forecasted.