Banking On It

The Bank Holiday weekend did not start as smoothly as planned, when the pleasure of having my salary go into the bank a day early (due to pay day falling on a Saturday) was overshadowed by the fact that my salary was about 30% less than I was expecting! After panicking that I might have miscalculated what my final pay would be (as I am leaving one school to go to work at another), I was reassured by the HR team that it was, in fact, an error on their part, and receiving a sincere apology for the inconvenience, was assured that the balance would be paid to me as soon as possible. It's inconvenient and a little annoying, but not life changing. No need to 'sweat the small stuff', as they say.

Once that was sorted, I was able to get everything organised for our weekend camping trip. We'd been keeping an eye on the weather forecast all week and it was increasingly looking like our 3-night break was going to be cut short to 2 nights if we were going to pack away a dry trailer-tent and not have to spend weeks with soggy canvas draped over furniture in the house or fences in the garden. Again, we were just grateful to be having a break away at all having had a holiday inn Wales earlier this year and a trip up North to visit family at the beginning of the Summer Holidays. It was not intended to be an expensive holiday with days out visiting attractions and eating out. It was simply our last opportunity to get away this year as a family and have some quality time relaxing together with no TV, computers, game devices etc. before the new school year starts. That's just what we did.

We arrived Friday evening at about 6:30pm and had pitched the trailer tent and set everything up inside by about 8:30. Just as previous visitors had stated in their reviews, the site was lovely with plenty of room between pitches and clean facilities not too far away. The site owner was friendly and helpful, offering to keep us up to date on the latest weather forecast so that we could decide whether or not to stay for the 3rd night.

Considering we wanted a relatively inexpensive weekend, we managed to fit quite a lot in...

On Saturday, we took advantage of free entry into Portchester Castle using Larry's ID card. We took a picnic and had lunch in the beautiful sunshine in the castle grounds, before taking a tour of the castle using the free audio guides.

As it was still early when we'd finished looking around the castle, we decided to take a short walk along the coast, stopping at a park where Little Z and Big J had fun on the zip wire and Larry and I enjoyed a rare half hour sitting in the sun, chatting and laughing, while the children had fun together, enjoying each other's company without arguing. A really lovely day.

After spending Sunday morning chilling out and generally not doing very much, we took a short drive to Emsworth, where we went for a lovely walk along the harbour, stopping to have lunch on the breezy waterfront before continuing our walk around the little town, via the ice cream parlour, and finally back to the car.

As the forecast had been fairly consistent throughout the week, when we arrived back at the campsite, we decided to pack up the trailer and head home.

It was a fabulous couple of days away costing very little, but giving us time together as a family without the usual distractions of home, as well as providing us with the opportunity to get the trailer tidied up and organised ready for going away again early next year.

Now to start thinking about going back to school...