Frodo is booked in for his annual habitation service on Tuesday 5th at the dealer in Newark on Trent. We are also booked into the dealer’s overnight area for Monday night, before the service, and Tuesday night after the service. Our booking seemed like a good idea at the time – get it all done before the main season – but then we realized that on Monday, being a bank holiday, we would not be able get Frodo out of his secure storage facility to travel up to Newark. Duh! We’d have to break Frodo out of prison on Sunday, which would mean that we’d need somewhere to stay en route.
Great! Sunday on a Bank Holiday weekend is not a wonderful time to find a campsite; first of all they’d be busy and, further more, they’d be busy with Satan’s Little Disciples. Francine did manage to find a club site near Peterborough with space – Ferry Meadows in the Nene Valley Country Park. All the hardstanding areas were unavailable but some grass pitches were still open. Happily, the recent weather had been dry so a grass pitch should be no problem. Francine booked it.
Now, Franco has a bucket list trip booked to Costa Rica in early June, so we won’t be able to spend June in La Belle France. Francine, though, has been hankering after a trip to Bonny Scotland. Since we’d be almost half way there after Frodo’s service, she made plans for us to continue north after Newark with our initial Scottish landfall being Moffat enabling us to visit Francine’s niece who lives close by. Scotland doesn’t really like Franco – it always rains on him – but, hey, I’m just the driver and it would be somewhere new.
First hurdle, though – dealing with a rugrat infested campsite on Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend. We released Frodo from captivity on Sunday morning, filled up with Trumped-expensive diesel and headed for Peterborough. We arrived at Ferry Meadows.
The campsite is split across a road with the hardstanding areas being on one side and the grass pitches, where we were to be located, on the opposite side of the road. Having missed out on filing the water tank at home, I paused at the motor vehicle service point. While I was attending to the water supply, Francine spotted an available pitch just beside the circular track, overlooking no one and far from the rugrat play areas. It looked about as good as we could do, so we went for it.
We had chosen well. Rugrats were cycling around the track but being tarmac rather than gravel, disturbance was minimal. Furthermore, we were away from areas that might encourage ball games. Unsociability rules, OK. Since kids were everywhere and I’m not allowed to take photos involving kids, you’ll have to imagine it.
After an installation beer, we went for an exploratory wander around the Country Park itself. I must say that it has been done very well. There is a vast an mount of grassy, open space encircled by lakes and the river Nene. If you’re a rabbit with children, it’s a great open space. There is also ample car parking. Even someone for whom this is an unnatural habitat, was impressed. Well done Peterborough.
We returned from our walk to our first paella of the trip. You can’t have too many paellas – apart from being tasty, it’s a one-pot dinner. Rugrat racket did eventually calm down and we settled in to watch some of the World Snooker Championship final.
It was less scary than I’d feared it might be.
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