Camping at Barn Farm - Mum's Birthday

I think it's probably true to state that we seem to have found a 'favourite' campsite. Mentioned multiple times so far in this blog (eg here, and here) Barn Farm is the nicest campsite EVER.

There's nothing there apart from the loo block, *some* hot showers and the views over the Derbyshire countryside. Oh and the wildlife! This time, the WHITE peacock (well peahen) had had some white babies - how cute - and there were some very old fashioned looking hens - straight from a children's farmyard story book! Not to mention the swallows (or were they swifts?) difficult to tell as they swooped and dived around the tents about 1foot above ground level. Amazing acrobatics!

Anyway, the occasion was Mum's birthday - we'd done the camping thing before, 2 years ago for the birthday celebrations and all enjoyed it so much we decided to do it again! This time the weather wasn't quite as cold as last time - but also not quite as dry! On the Saturday it completely bucketed it down. We solved this problem in several ways.

1. Dad went to sleep
2. Liza Jane and Mum went off to Chatsworth, and then Bakewell for a wander (and tea and a scone!)

On the up side, we did find out that our new tent will fit 4 chairs inside around a table - and with the impromptu awning that dad rigged up from pieces of string and random bits of tent pole he 'happened to have in the boot of the car' we managed to survive quite well even with the 'weather'.

Camping at Barn Farm

Last weekend we broke out the camping equipment and headed off to Barn Farm in Birchover for the 1st camping trip of the season. It's our favorite campsite - there's nothing there! No bar, no entertainments, just a couple of fields, a few very loud peacocks, and some cows (they used to have 2 water buffalo called Charles and Camilla, but they've gone now)
The piccies are over in the display on the right for the time being but are more permanently to be found here.
We did the 'Chatsworth Walk' again - a bit tough to start with, but once you break out onto the moors, it's a lovely stroll through the grounds of the house and along the riverbank. Really nice. On top of everything, we got the new pop up tent out. It really is fantastic - pops up a treat, and about 4 seconds to put back down again. It's huge too - Dan can stand up in it so it's pretty practical. The design is that you can adjoin any 2 small dome tents to it as add ons - they become bedrooms and this is the main living area. It's called a 'base' tent, by Decathlon - same people our little 3 man pop up is by. Fab!!!!!

Camping at Barn Farm

Another lovely weekend spent at Barn Farm in Derbyshire - we went with Matt and Marina and Gemma & Andy. We got our lovely new tent to use - there were some pros and cons....

Pros....

• tent was very quick to pitch (in fact M&M pitched it for us on Thursday to enure a space on the campsite)
• it was chucking it down when we were packing up, tent took less than a minute to get it into the bag - no struggling in the rain and a few appreciative stares from campers around the field
  
• decent amount of room for sleeping (2 people)
  

Cons....

• in the wet weather there wasn't anywhere to sit or cook
• the front door slopes inwards therefore when it's chucking it down, it chucks it into the tent as well (probably need to buy the tarpaulin to go over the entrance for when it's nasty weather)
• I'm not really one for having food stuff alongside your sleeping stuff so we kept most of it in the car - this was OK when it wasn't raining but when it was....it was a bit of a p. in the a.!

On the whole a positive experience. It'll be good when quechua bring out the bigger version - or (take note quechua) when they make a modular tent which fits together several of the pop up sections into one big tent!

On Saturday, Sgt Major Connor marched us up to the top of the hill on a nice walk which was a little challenging for a start but meandered through some lovely countryside to finish. It was about 5 miles and very pleasant indeed! We all subscribe to walkingworld.com which is a great resource for finding walks - not only does it provide the walk on an OS map section for you to print out, but there are descriptions of each stage as well as photos of the landmarks on the way so you can be sure you're at the 'right stile' of have passed the 'correct tree'!

Saturday evening we were booked into the Druid Inn in Birchover (walking distance from the campsite). The decor is lovely and the food was fabulous - unfortunately we think they were a bit short staffed as the service wasn't all it could have been towards the end of the meal. It just slightly took the edge off what was a really spectacular meal.

After dinner, Dan & I went for a lie down, it was only about 8:30 but we were pooped after the walk and hige dinner! Anyway, we both woke up about 3am dying for the loo....! So much for a wild night out. The rain had started overnight so we snuck out for a swift wee in the pouring rain...it didn't stop by morning so we all decided to pack u and go home. It took us about half an hour from start to finish. I'm very impressed.

We then all headed for the Grouse & Claret in Matlock for a lovely fry-up to finish the weekend off. Smashing! I'd not have been really into cooking in the rain!!!!

More Lovely Stuff

I think I mentioned in a previous post about the fact that buying things shouldn't make you happy - I firmly believe that you have to be happy to start with....and then the "stuff" is the icing on the cake, however, our latest purchase is making me very happy indeed!
PS It's the 3 second 'Air' - and no, I haven't worked out how to put it down yet!