Hello All

Well for those who didn't know already, we did hop off abroad to find some sun - we had a lovely week just outside Malaga in a beach front hotel - it was very relaxing and very hot! We did a lot of walking every day and really explored the area including a couple of trips into Malaga.

We came home and tried our hand at 'wild camping' so we put our new tiny tent in the rucksack, walked to the train station and then took the train to Chichester and hiked the canal to a little campsite we used before. It was great fun but quite tiring, I was carrying a pot of homeade chilli and 2 litres of wine so it was much lighter on the way home! We're planning to do some hiking / camping when we get to Scotland so it was a good test for that although for most of the trip we will be using our usual, much larger tent.

For our anniversary we had a night at a little place called Play Hatch, near Reading in a gastro pub with lovely French style cabin rooms out the back. The rooms were great, with a small outside terrace but the food wasn't great in the evening unfortunately. James' steak in the 'chefs special sauce' was horrible and they drowned the baked camembert in honey which was pretty yucky. Never mind, we headed from there to a campsite near Banbury and what a curious, crazy place it was. The canal ran through the campsite, which was a small holding with sheep, chickens (roaming free most of the time) and plenty of pigs - it was called the Pig Place and the farm shop sold plenty of fresh produce. Alongside the canal bank they had lots of sofas and fire pits and a very chilled atmosphere and we had 2 nights down there sitting ouside very comfortably enjoying the views.

Whilst we were there, we did more walking (canals and fields) and also went across to the Cotswold Olimpicks (their spelling!) for the Friday evening - it's a crazy place, about a thousand people gather on a very steep hill to watch a range of different 'sporting' activities - it's the home of shin kicking (jeez, they really go for it, one guy did it bare footed which looked very painful as they kick very hard) and they also had a group relay activity, reminiscent of the sports day we used to have on Southsea Common - with sack racing and an obstacle race - it was chaotic with no thought to health and safety but hilarious to watch as people crashed over all the time. It was followed up by a torch light procession back to the village - it was pretty un-nerving to be holding a flame amongst so many other people also holding flames, but it looked amazing.

We went to Rousham Gardens whilst we were camping, I'd never heard of it - it's pretty small compared to Blenheim Palace but the gardens were just beautiful - and again, the canal ran through (no pigs though) and a stunning walled garden with a peacock and a dove house. We also did Blenheim Palace but it was too cold to do the gardens that time so we will go back another time for them.

xxx

PS sorry for the upside down photos, I'm clearly having some issues!!