Never nudge a pony

 

Annabel and I grabbed a change of scene and a couple of nights camping in the New Forest.

We camped at a pop-up site – Harry’s Meadow and every excursion took us through the village of Woodgreen.  I would slow the car to a crawl and we would admire the many donkeys which, together with their foals were hanging about in the middle of the mainstreet, occasionally browsing from the grass verge with a studied insouciance as I slalomed round them.

But on the second evening, we went through Woodgreen and saw not one solitary donkey. 

‘That’s odd,’ said Annabel, ‘I wonder where they’ve all gone?’

As we approached the wooded road to the campsite our route was blocked by traffic cones.  Puzzled, I stopped.

A floppy-haired man stepped out of the shadows and explained in an upper-crust accent that the road was blocked by a fallen tree.  We told him we were headed for Harry’s Meadow and he gave us directions, with repeated injunctions not to follow the Satnav as it would take us into an un-surfaced wilderness. 

As we pulled away, Annabel and I both agreed that he had been the dead spit of Hugh Grant.

We followed his circuitous route – ‘Did he say left and then right or right and then left?’  And it was on this narrow road that we made a discovery. 

It was here that the donkeys of Woodgreen spent their evenings.

And the cows.

And the ponies.

And none of them at all was cowed by an approaching car. 

‘Just give that pony a nudge with your car,’ suggested Annabel.

‘No thanks, it’ll be my number plate it kicks.’

But when eventually we got safely back to the tent, we raised a glass to Hugh Grant and his excellent travel directions.

 

 

 

 

A Test of Friendship

We have spent many a weekend with our friends the Thompsons. Once we lived in County Durham, in a village next door to theirs, had our first children within a year of one another. Now we live hundreds of miles apart.

All our youngsters are living independently. Hannah even got married. So nowadays it is just us four old codgers meeting up.

We meet in the Peak District since it is half way between.

Since it was July, we decided to camp.

The forecast looked okay. Perhaps a little rain on Sunday.

Not long after we had pitched our tents on Friday, watery clouds began to frown-out the sun.

We checked the forecast – some rain now on Saturday too.

By Saturday afternoon, we had retreated early from our hike.  Wet and listless we explored Bakewell, crowded with damp tourists.  

Then we began to get the hang of it – basically the forecast had been wrong- it was going to rain heavily all weekend.

Well, now we knew.  We made plans for Sunday – we’d go to Haddon Hall where there was also an “Artisan Fair” (like a craft fair but without the teasel hedgehogs and decoupage) and then on to the cinema to see Yesterday.

The guides at Haddon Hall crammed us with interesting anecdotes, the artisans told us their secrets – how to hunt problem gulls with a lanner falcon, how to fly fish for brown trout.  Best of all, we met several alpacas, making their weird humming bleats.

Yesterday was entertaining and its (many) flaws gave us plenty to discuss.

Then on Monday morning, at last the sun shone.  We walked miles, took all our photos and dismantled our tents in the dry.

“Monday will be the day we remember!” said Carolyn.

But I’m not so sure – I’ll always hold onto the memory of good friends who were able to make even a wet weekend in tents fun.

Camp Friends

Who in the world would want to spend a weekend with a single toilet between fourteen people?  Especially as the toilet had no door and its walls were loosely woven and see-through.  One shower too, but only for people who didn't mind cold water and a strong smell of gas.

Let me put it differently. 

Who would want to stay in a tucked-away field, bordered with poplars and a gurgling stream, bounded by a drift of buttercups and lady’s smock? In the distance, the purple haze of a herbal ley.  Over our shoulder, a ploughed field with a hare bounding across it. Beyond, a paddock with a new-born foal.

But whether you see the environment as hell or paradise, really the surroundings are not the main thing.

It's the chance to catch up and debrief with a dozen of our oldest friends. People we met when we were eighteen or so at uni, and still working out who we were.

When we share the food we’ve brought and cooperate over cooking in a cauldron above a firepit, we accidentally recreate the community of our long-ago youth.  And we talk and talk and talk. 

And guess what, we are still working out who we are.

Dawn Chorus

It was 4am when the sun tilted over the brim of the hill into Hidden Valley in Worcestershire. First the larks, then wrens, dunnocks, blackbirds, goldfinches joined in a jubilant and ear-splitting dawn chorus.  The families in the six tents stirred.  Some lay listening in wonder.  Others rolled over to grab the tail end of sleep before it departed entirely.

The birds and the humans were doing the same thing  - forming community.  Speaking for the people, some of us met thirty-five years ago at university.  Others are partners or children who came along a little later.  Communication nowadays is often online, but every so often, Annabel shoos us out of the ether and into tents.

We shared adventures in a way you just can’t on FaceBook.  We learned to cook over an open fire.  We invaded the local pub.  We followed Dave tramping  across fields and challenging the owners of luxury homes who had blocked rights of way. And when the heavens opened, we all sardined into Nick and Jackie’s tent.

Then, at the end of the weekend, it was time to strike camp, and our little village melted away.  As we rise for work tomorrow, we shall remember the larks soaring in song and waking all the many other birds.  They will sing to the Hidden Valley where only flattened rectangles of grass show we were once a community there.