Home at Last

After saying our goodbyes to Simon, Vikki and Sara we left Farnborough at 9.35am for the last leg of our month away. We had a good trip and after stopping at Sourton Services for a late lunch and a snooze for the driver, we finally drove up outside the house at 4.50pm. Mike had driven us 2076 miles in the RV and we'd had a fabulous time. I lost count of the number of county borders we crossed and we were unbelievably lucky with the weather but it's really nice to be back home!

Family Day

Up early this morning as we were off to watch Cameron play football at Camberley followed by a fast drive to watch the second half of Jack's game at his home ground near Bracknell. Cam's team won but unfortunately Jack's team lost. It was good to see the boys playing and Ellie was at Jack's game so we saw her too.

Back to the flat for lunch and a lazy afternoon before Vikki and Sara arrived. Sara is three (going on fourteen!) so we went out for an early evening meal to The Swan at Ash Vale ...

which turned out to be a perfect location for us as it was right on the canal ...

Norfolk to Hampshire

We had a good journey from Norfolk and as we couldn't meet up with Simon until this evening we decided to leave the motorway, crossed the river at Staines ...

and headed for Runnymede as a good place to spend the afternoon. We parked by the river in our usual spot, had a cuppa and a snooze and watched the boats pass by ...

Lovely and relaxing after a long drive. When our parking time was up we made tracks to find Simon's new flat in Farnborough but unfortunately we caught the evening rush-hour and so got stuck in traffic several times. Eventually we made it and the little map he'd drawn for us was perfect. We pulled into his car park just as he was about to go to football training for the boys so we had a quick guided tour of the flat and then he left us for a couple of hours. When he got back we ordered pizzas, had red wine (homebrew of course!) and a good old natter - great! Dogs are not allowed in his flat so we moved out to the RV for the night as we didn't want to get him thrown out for breaking the rules!

Nottinghamshire to Norfolk

We were up really early today and off to try out the fantastic 21st century showers. Wow! There were six wet-rooms in the Ladies and all taps and showers are automatic. Quite a difference from some of the toilet blocks we’ve had on this holiday. All C&C sites are spotlessly clean but they are sometimes located in older buildings and the showers range from good power ones to rather tired ones which we had in Keswick.

We couldn’t decide last night which was the best route to take so I’d checked on the AA Route Finder online and had made notes of which way to go. We set off just after 9am and found our way really easily onto the A617 to Newark. As we passed over the River Trent there was a train crossing at the same time …

It was then a simple trip down the A1 and A1(M) to the A14 and across to the A11. After a couple of stops for coffee and lunch we arrived at the Norwich C&C Club Site just after 2pm. We’ve stayed here so many times now that it seems like a second home!

All posts for the next week will be on my Broadland blog but as we’ll be on the Broads the signal is not good and so I may not be able to post them until we’ve finished our week’s holiday on Crown Gem 4.