The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.

Thus wrote the poet Robert Burns. And “a-gley” our plans certainly went for our May half term holiday! Plan A was for a family celebration of a milestone birthday over a few days in the Cotswolds with my brother’s family and my parents. However with my Dad struck down with mysterious chronic leg pain, my parents (the catalyst for the gathering) reluctantly had to withdraw. Plan B was to carry on without them… however the weekend before, our eldest and Kiri were ill with a heavy cold and fever and by the Thursday before the holiday, I too had it (Kiri had forbidden me from being ill during the holiday and I generally try to be compliant). Plan C was to therefore delay our camping by a day, so I called the campsite on the Thursday and said we’d be with them on the Sunday rather than the Saturday. An hour later they called back to say they were cancelling our booking altogether… because the campsite was waterlogged. We booked a different, drier campsite, refusing to abandon the plans altogether.

By Sunday there were 3 of us unwell, so the 4 of us we called a family council meeting over a lunch of pizza to decide whether to stick with plan D, starting firstly with a discussion as to how I should be addressed as chair. The meeting was one containing many tangents, including whether socks count as underwear, as sometimes they’re not under anything… moving to acknowledging it’s more logical to call trousers “pants”, as “pants” is short for “underpants”… that which goes under the pants. However… we were unanimous in agreeing to go camping and the meeting closed with an action for me to find out why minutes taken at a meeting are called minutes. A small insight into family life.

The rain stopped. We loaded up our van marvelling at the leftover space as we normally have our little hatchback bursting at the seams. The tyres were pumped up to deal with the extra weight of calpol and paracetamol. We dosed ourselves up, and off we went – heading for Hayles Fruit Farm. The engine was barely warm when we arrived to an incredibly enthusiastic welcome from Mel, the campsite warden. We picked our pitch, eyeing up the dark clouds gathering and wondering whether the low rumbling in the distance was a steam train or thunder. Amazingly the rain held out until we’d got up both our tent and gazebo – the first time we’ve decided to go all posh with camping and have an additional shelter.

Once the washing up was complete after a dinner of leftover pizza, we played Uno and Crib with our eldest before sitting down to watch the swallows darting over the field; birds of prey hovering expectantly in the distance. We’d made the right call. And the fresh air was possibly even making us better. Or maybe it was just the wine?

It was either the dawn chorus or our youngest that woke us at 0430… but somehow we managed to hold out until 0715 for our first coffee. We realised that we’d made an error in our packing as we’d assumed the farm shop would be open to buy milk, but according to their website, the shop wasn’t open on a Monday. We improvised… then had a low key start to the morning with a kick around of a football. Ponies had joined us in the field and we decided to have a wander to get our bearings. As we headed towards the shop we saw that it was open! Now there’s a lesson kids – never trust anything your read on the web… especially now generative AI is encroaching! Anyhow, we reserved some burgers to pick up later and returned some veg and Jonagold apple juice to the tent, then set off towards Cotswold Farm Park.

On the short drive towards Cotswold Farm Park, we spotted a car with a funny contraption on top, just about to pull out of a side road – the Google StreetView car! And it began to follow us. Sensing an opportunity, at the next possible occasion, we pulled into the side of the road, leaped out of the van, and hastily arranged ourselves into a tableau, forever to be immortalised on Google Maps! Well. That was the idea. It turns out the photo that they used for that section of road was one from their car travelling in the other direction, so the effort was wasted… but at least Penny is featured where we passed the car in the side road.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, we arrived at the farm park and met up with my brother’s family, rushing immediately to the bottle feeding barn. Turned out that was quite a good call, as a torrential shower thundered on the corrugated roof of the barn. We chose to stay in the barn for a shearing demonstration… amused by a sparrow that darted onto the stage just before the demo, hastily changing its mind and flying away. Would have been a very different demo if it had stayed…

As the weather was still inclement, we made our way to the adventure barn to have lunch, but it turns out that an adventure barn is full of… well, adventures. Food eventually was consumed, but not until plenty of playing had happened first, which gave the weather time to get the rain out of its system. We moved onto the rare breeds trail where none of the animals seemed to be hungry, except for the goats, but they happily took the processed grass pellets, despite there being plenty of fresh stuff all around them. Meanwhile, I appreciated seeing the live versions of that night’s dinner.

Soon the grass pellets were all gone and it was time to visit the bouncy pillows. Now forgive me for going off on a slight tangent (no prizes for guessing why the family council meeting went off track!), but I have a thing about signs. I think there are too many signs that just aren’t useful. Let me share three exhibits from the holiday.

Exhibit A: Sign saying a maximum of 30 children at one time on a bouncy pillow. But there’s no-one operating a one in one out system. Did the person who wrote the sign ever meet children? Our youngest is getting really good a subitising (yes we had to look up the word too when their teacher first mentioned it!)… but how can you subitise 30 children? What happens when you add a 31st?

Exhibit B: Car park sign in Bourton. Note the costs for Mon-Sat and the costs for Sun. Why have two sets? Keep it simple folks – or if you’re going to have two sets, why not have a bit of fun, and take a penny off the charges for a Sunday… just to be kind?

Exhibit C: New Road Layout Ahead in Broadway. Now. Let’s think this through. Most folk who drive down a road will either do it regularly, or occasionally. If you do so regularly, whilst the road is changing layout, you will have been subjected to the roadworks. You will know the road layout has changed, as you have witnessed the change in progress. If you drive occasionally, odds are, you won’t remember what the previous layout was. So who is the sign designed for?

I feel this calls for a sign saying “No Unnecessary Signs”. Crumbs, I’ve just realised I’ve had a rant about signs. I must be middle aged – I should probably move to Tunbridge Wells and write letters to The Times.

Anyhow, back to the story! After a bit of bouncing, we ventured through the woodland area, appreciated some bees, and went off to hold some chicks, by which stage Kiri and one of our kids were flagging, so we bade farewell to the cousins and hopped back in the van. After a quick stop at Budgens for supplies, we returned to the campsite and I headed off to the shop to pick up the burgers. As I walked up the field, one of the ponies lifted its head and looked at me. I swear it was staring me down. Then it started to walk towards me. Slowly at first, then gathering pace until it was at a full out gallop, mane and tail streaming behind it. Despite its size, I felt my pulse quicken. Was this the end? Well, I’m typing this, so no… turns out it just wanted to itch its bottom on the telegraph pole next to me… BUT… I think it wanted to show me who was boss.

Our lamb burger was incredible. Our youngest had pork and apple and our eldest declared that their steak burger was “the best burger ever”, so there we have it! The pork and apple burger had a soporific effect (or it might have been the 0430 start…), but our youngest was asleep by half past 6, so we played a game of banagrams with our eldest. Once it was just the two of us for the remaining evening light, we came to the realisation that we probably needed a new water container for camping – not only had this one lost its silicon seal, but the ginger tea had a distinctly soapy taste to it… almost soapy water with essence of ginger. Must have done Kiri some good though, as she had the best hand of crib we’ve had in over a decade of playing together – 6, 7, 7, 8 in her hand and a turn up of 8! Even though it was only 9, we decided to turn in for the night.

6am is a much more reasonable time to wake, especially when it’s possible to doze until 7. However, that’s when the rain started and rain was clearly the order of the morning (although I’m not sure who ordered it!). We assessed the angle of the rain and worked out we could have one side of the gazebo open and we put the coffee on. It was a slightly dysfunctional breakfast time, where our youngest fell off a small camping chair whilst holding a cup of milk… but somehow managed to place the cup into the cup holder of the next door chair. Impressive, but still milk everywhere! Fried egg banjos all round inspired our kids to compose a “we love eggs” song – a moment of sheer joy!

Bourton-on-the-Water-in-the-Rain was the destination for meeting with cousins for the next day of fun. After a quick and efficient conflab (with very few tangents) we decided first to go to the motoring museum… mainly because it was an inside activity! We were possibly more interested in all of the historical artefacts associated with motoring than the kids were, but we all had fun. Kiri and I were drawn to a landrover campervan from the 60s… pondering whether it would be possible for Penny (our van) to take on a third role as a campervan beyond her first role as coppicing van and second as mode of transport for the family. It would be a stretch. We were interested to see that Redex has been around for so long (having needed a lot of it recently for Penny!) and amused that there was a Fisher Price toy garage as an exhibit that’s identical to the one that’s in the kids’ room at home!

The rain was still doing its thing, so the two families headed to respective vehicles to consume lunch (and a dessert of calpol for our youngest!). I don’t know what calpol has in it these days, but as we meandered towards the famous model village, our youngest asked “what’s a bourton”. After several suggestions (it’s not a tangible thing, it’s an ethereal philosophy?), we settled upon a bourton most likely being an American Christmas whisky which is traditionally taken over ice… which is why the Cotswold village specifically distinguishes itself by saying it’s “on the water”. And what a lot of water. The model village was also soggy, but that didn’t stop the kids from pretending they were giants, stomping around a normal sized village. I was drawn to the model village within the model village… which itself had a model village within that. Got to love a bit of recursion!

Despite the rain, we felt duty bound to have an icecream. Not for the first time this holiday we’d looked at each other and said “what would Granny and Grandpa do in this situation” and we felt that they would approve of our choice. We went on a hunt for an inside icecream and found somewhere with indoor seating… so we all piled in, bringing half of the water (and some of the bourton) into the venue, only to be told that they only had vanilla icecream. Out we all trooped, until we found somewhere with more exciting flavours. I channelled my inner Grandpa and went for clotted cream flavour! Following the feeding of some ducks which was accompanied by a game for the parents of “stop my child falling into the stream”, we departed once again, vowing to meet at a train station the following day.

Dinner was wraps, followed by a game of dude dice (with a van where space is almost limitless, we can bring a whole variety of games camping!), after which, the kids were sent to bed and no-one had a high temperature! We celebrated with wine and maltesers, whilst chatting about how to “solve” the church. We didn’t have answers and neither did the ponies who first invaded another pitch, then came to say hi to us. Neither did the low swooping bats in the gathering dusk. So we gave up and went to bed.

On our penultimate morning I woke to hear our eldest excitedly declaring that 4 geese and lots of goslings had been observed during the early morning hedge wee. This morning the eggs were scrambled, not fried… but Kiri’s phone electrics were fried instead, as she dropped her phone down the loo. I won’t say how many phones she’s dropped down a loo previously, but I will say that this didn’t come as a complete surprise, and I will also say that this wouldn’t have happened with a hedge wee. Anyway we settled into our slow morning routine of making packed lunches and doing the washing up, before we drove to Winchcombe where we found a car park that charged one whole pound for one whole day. Don’t need a big or complicated sign for that!

Along with the cousins, we circumnavigated the town to get to the train station, noting that in some seasons trains stop at Hayles Abbey Halt which is less than a mile from our camp site. We like to tackle the big questions in life, so as we waited for our train, we pondered on what the female equivalent is of “fireman” when it comes to those on the footplate of a steam train. Any ideas? We all squeezed into a carriage compartment, complete with sliding door and settled down for a journey up to Broadway. As we were a couple of days after a steam rally, there were plenty of train spotters for us to spot on the way, as well as lovely countryside, but as the track was fairly straight, we couldn’t see the whole train on any sweeping curves.

Once in Broadway our destination was a park on the other side of town, but it was well worth the walk – in fact we spent the whole afternoon there! We gathered for a picnic and then there was something for everyone in terms of playing. Our youngest was happy going around and around on the slide (no, I don’t mean roundabout… I mean doing circuits of going down the slide), I was in uncle mode on the swings for a good half hour and Kiri found a wall. And then those of us who play at being grown ups came up with a strategy for the long walk back to the train – icecreams! Alas, for we found not any of the scoop variety, but verily a freezer was found and icrecream taste buds were sated. In fact we were almost back at the station when our eldest asked “why is this journey taking less time on the way back?”. Icecream my child, icecream. However, when Kiri then announced that if she’d had a choice of icecream or hot drink she’d rather a hot drink, the tune of the eldest was changed, declaring “do you not know how offended I feel?”

For this next journey we didn’t have a compartment, instead finding ourselves in the buffet car where fortuitously there was a hot drink for Kiri. We stayed on the train all the way down to Cheltenham race course so we could do the whole of the track and the kids were happy looking out of the window, drawing and reading together. Once back in Winchcombe, we bade each other farewell outside Coop, before stocking up on the three major food groups for the evening – sausages, beer and chocolate.

On this final evening, our routine was well-established, so after a family washing up session the kids settled fairly easily. The skies were threatening and the temperature had dropped, so Kiri and I sheltered in the gazebo, reflecting on our time away.

The next morning we woke to rain – just what you want when striking a tent! Checking the weather forecast, we noted that there was going to be a window from about 8 until 10:30 where it would be dry, so we consumed our scrambled egg breakfast (but made sure we didn’t consume the slug that had found a home overnight in one of our cups). We then said goodbye to the camping stove, saying we’d see it again at Greenbelt… then promptly had to explain to it that we weren’t at Greenbelt as I got it back out to dry the camping kettle! We’d packed loads of rags in preparation for drying a tent (it’s not advisable to use a camping stove to do that!) so got to work… but everything was still a bit damp. 10:15 came and we were off, asking the kids for the code to the campsite gate for a final time (they’d memorised it faster than us!).

Turns out we missed the rain… the forecast was now just for cloud, so when we got home we hung the groundsheets and tent inners on the washing line and checked our courgettes and tomatoes for slug damage. The following day we put up the gazebo to dry it out, then packed it away. Kiri went to put it in the loft… but no sooner had she gone upstairs than she rushed past me again saying “the bag’s buzzing”. No readers, it wasn’t her fried phone… it was a wasp! To be honest, we were buzzing too – despite foiled plans and grandparents who were sorely missed (as well as just being sore), we’d had a good time. Now to find time for a rescheduled family celebration!