Monday, October 02, 2006
The first trial run
We’ve never been to Birchwood Tourist Park before and were delighted to find it right in the middle of Wareham forest with pine trees all around. Our pitch was at the forests edge four minutes walk from the children’s play area and toilet block. The pitch was slightly sloping and the park warden was kind enough to lend us a couple of wooden planks to level up. I got the steadies down and began preparing the van while Ali drove off to fetch the kids.
Upon setting up I discovered that there was a retaining pin missing from one of the bunks, the table clip came off in my hand and we had a propane gas connection with a butane bottle! The campsite allowed us to swap our half empty butane bottle for full propane one just paying the gas charge so we’d be able to have a hot meal that night.
The kids arrived screaming as usual and demanding food, so situation normal. That night we were surprised that they all went to sleep in the same room fairly quickly without too much bother and relaxed with a well-earned bottle of wine.
The following day was awning erection day so we broke out the instructions, poles and material and began trying to make head and tail of it all. We stood around for quite a time scratching our heads as there was no parts list and the diagram definitely didn’t match the amount of poles and fixings we had! Thankfully, our Scottish neighbour came across and offered a hand and 3 hours later it was up. We weren’t going mad after all, the diagram was missing two complete sets of poles and supports!
The rest of the weekend went without much ado apart from the last night where I lay in bed thinking why’s the water pump occasionally going? I got up to check all the taps and lo and behold the kitchen tap was leaking through the body so I had to completely drain the system and be without water for our final day.
Hitching up and leaving turned out to be more of a challenge than arriving as we weren’t aware that we should have vacated our pitch by 11 and were cooking dinner when the next pitch occupants arrived! I apologised and explained or inexperience and the new occupants were very understanding and allowed us to have lunch. When we arrived our pitch was in the middle of a large grassy area, when we came to leave there were campers, caravans and tents everywhere with guy ropes galore and it was quite tricky getting the outfit back to the road.
