Celebrations in Portsmouth

We headed off to Portsmouth last weekend to celebrate my Uncle's 70th birthday (which was actually in February) and to meet up with some of the family for a good old natter (on the adults side) and a good old play (on the childrens side).


After a rather boring and long winded 5 hour car journey down we reached Portsmouth in time for a much needed buffet lunch and a (very) few hours of chill time catching up with the latest gos and letting the children unwind and play. Ben enjoyed playing air hockey and Katie took charge of teaching her Auntie and various cousins how to make woollie horses! I do believe these little woollen creatures will soon be taking over the world. People young and old seem to enjoy making them (or variations of them, my sister made a rather cute woollie fox) and Katie has had interest shown from as far afield as America! Perhaps she'll make me rich one day.
A growing collection of woollie horses.

Anyway. After much chatter, tea, wine, beer, cake etc., etc., we had to head off to the campsite as we'd decided to put our tents and other camping paraphernalla to good use. We were pretty surprised how we managed to fit:

2 x 3 man tents, 4 fold up chairs, 4 sleeping bags, 4 pillows, 4 blow up single beds, one hand pump, throw-away bbq, 2 x trays, 1 x cooling rack (for the bbq to stand on), cool box with yummy breakfast inside, 1 good sized box of essentials, camping burner and gas, 1 large bottle of water, 1 fleece, 4 thick jumpers (it was pretty cool that evening), 1 large and 2 small overnight drawstring bags and 4 towels

all in our boot! It was good fun and we were extremely lucky that the weather had turned warm and dry. Not too sure if we'd enjoy ourselves as much if it was pouring with rain, we'd need a bigger tent(s) for this or some kind of shelter for cooking.

Took some lovely family photos but I'll keep those for our eyes only! However, here's a good one of P blowing up one of the (very comfortable and extremely reasonably priced (T...co)) beds. Actually, the hand pump broke just as he started to blow up the first bed, but he's a handy man and he managed to fix in the end (lucky it wasn't raining, or dark!). I've just realised it looks like he's wearing a skirt!

On the Sunday we packed up early and headed for an hour on the beach, which was a stone's throw from the campsite, as it was, again, a gorgeous day. We all had a paddle and Katie had a swim - very brave, the water was pretty cold, and Ben and I hunted for pretty shells and pebbles with holes in. Then we headed back to my cousin's home for a delicious roast chicken lunch and another three hours of chatter (and play) before heading home. Luckily the journey home was much quicker, although a couple of accidents ahead of us, just as we reached the first main road, made us think we were in for another hot and tiresome journey.

Thanks guys and gals for a brilliant weekend. We've been shown a much quicker route down to your neck of the woods for next time, skipping the dreaded M25 and the A3!