Saturday, 10 August 2013

Return of the happy campers

We got back yesterday after a great holiday.

The efforts of the nefarious rodents had left us distraught when we first arrived at the campsite and unpacked our kit only to find our relatively new tent completely ruined.  We soon recovered the situation with our customary aplomb.  We repacked everything and managed to get a room for the night at the Premier Inn less than a mile away.  Over a nice dinner at the adjoining pub, we planned our next move.

Using my smartphone, we researched camping/outdoor shops that might be large enough to have a reasonable selection of tents and concluded that Go Outdoors in Coventry was our best bet.  To find the place we had to relate the map on the Go Outdoors website to our 30 year old OS map and soon discovered that the shop was somewhere in an industrial park on the site of the former motorworks.  After getting directions, we found the place without too much difficulty

Go Outdoors tends go in for massive shops and there were around 50 tents on display in the Coventry store. We decided on a Outwell Birdland 3 - fortunately the shop had this tent at a very competitive price.  Thank you Go Outdoors.  Our new tent proved easy to erect and also to pack away at the end as Outwell provided a sensibly proportioned tent bag.  Thank you Outwell.

Most days we went cycling in the mornings and visited some lovely historic houses and gardens in the afternoons, getting in free as  members/friends of National Trust and Historic Houses Association. Thank you National Trust and HHA.

Except for the day we went tent shopping (which was bakingly hot) and one day of rain, the weather was perfect - pleasant and no too hot.  The campsite had lovely views across rolling countryside and a couple of little fishing lakes.  Plenty of space for caravans and tents.  We even managed to use our electric hookup for the first time as there was no extra charge for this.




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