The Great Camping Disaster...

Well, it was, or it wasn't, depending on who you ask. My children, the Eternal Optimists remember only the highlights and think it was a GREAT holiday! (for highlights read - everything new and exciting - sleeping bags and torches feature very highly...)

09:00 I pack up the car in record time so that we are all ready to go.
11:30 Great Granny Mu arrives from Manchester so we have to visit with her before we can leave otherwise we won't see her all week.
11:31 The car won't start.
11:32 Adam decides it's the battery and starts fiddling under the bonnet as there is some 'corrosion' on the battery that needs getting off.
11:45 Great Granny Mu comes to our house instead.
12:00 Adam goes out to buy a new battery.
12:05 The campsite we wanted to stay at rang back to say that their pitches were too waterlogged.
12:10 After several attempts I find a campsite in that will take a tent as big as ours and has space (and has shower facilities!)
12:30 Adam returns after realising that although he took his wallett, his card was not in his wallett...
12:35 Granny Jack goes home to get some jump leads to see if we can't just get it started.
13:00 We get the car started.
13:15 Everyone piles in the car and we get going!
15:30 As we head towards the campsite, we can't help but realise that it's in the middle of a town between the sports centre and a playing field. Not the country. This is the problem with the campsite guide not having a picture...
15:31 Adam does a U-turn in the campsite entrance.
15:32 We start ringing another campsite that has 'Farm' in the title. They have space...
16:15 We arrive at the 'farm' which is a working farm down a country lane - much more like it. But we can't see any other tents.
16:16 There are however, a load of dirty old caravans bunched together in a field.
16:17 The farmer's wife comes out and tells us we can camp in the immediate field in front of us which has two of the abandoned caravans in it.
16:30 Seeming as it's heading for dinnertime we cut our losses and start putting up the tent facing away from the caravan graveyard.
18:00 Adam sets off for the local town to find some milk for the morning and some more gas for the cooker...
18:15 We unpack in the tent and tidy up so it looks rather cosy. The children get their pyjamas on SUPER excited to be sleeping in a sleeping bag.
18:16 Josie needs the toilet so we all put our shoes on and trek over to the ONE toilet that although clean is rather primitive. Not ever having to have used such basic facilities NEITHER Will or Josie will go, and suddenly 'don't need to go anymore'. I go, to prove that it's ok and no spiders are attacking me, but they still won't go.
18:30 In desparation Josie now needs to go so badly she's considering the previously unconsiderable, and we all trek over there again. Will however, with his legs crossed, practically hopping on one leg, does 'not need to go'...
18:35 Adam rings as the gas shop was closed and he's in Sainsbury's wondering what to get for dinner that doesn't need cooking.
18:40 Will has held out valiantly, but his bladder is winning and meekly he asks if we can go to the toilets AGAIN!!!
19:00 Adam returns with a selection from the deli, some chips and dip, and mini muffins. We all dig in.
21:00 We finally get the children into bed, who have waited all day to sleep in the sleeping bags. Buzz is so tired that he barely makes a noise and conks out like a light.
21:30 It's cold and I have no way to heat water for my hot chocolate, so we decide to get an early night and hope that the children all sleep all night...
00:34 Buzz wakes up with a dirty nappy. I change him and glance at my watch to see the time. It's not particularly dark and in my sleepy state as I look at my watch (which has no numbers on it) - I read 06:00 (one hand at the top, one at the bottom).
00:40 After wondering why Buzz is acting so tired when he's slept all night, I look at my phone for confirmation of the time and read 00:41.
00:41 Buzz goes straight back to sleep.
02:00 It starts raining.
02:30 We are woken by little voices unzipping their sleeping compartment. We unzip ours to find Will and Josie huddles together with Josie's little lantern in their hands a little excited but also a little worried that 'it's raining on their roof'. I usher them back to bed and we all lay there listening as the rain gets heavier.
04:30 Two little voices are at our beside again, saying that they are cold. I pull back the blanket and they both pile in between me and Adam. The rain is sufficiently heavy that Adam comments that we probably wouldn't hear Buzz if he was crying... I get up to check him. He is flat out sleeping like a log.
04:35 Before I can get back into bed again, Will informs us that there was rain in the tent. Slightly worried I ask where. I start walking over to the children's bedroom and find myself with rather wet feet. A quick shine around of the torch reveals the living space of the tent is rapidly filling up with water.

What followed was two hours of Adam and I wading about with our pyjamas rolled up, pausing for a documentoral photograph of the scene for posterity, Adam then stripping off to the waist as he belted back and forth from the car getting soaked to the skin with firstly: children, then bedding and then almost literally throwing everything else into the car whilst Will and Josie jumped about inside the car with the engine running and the heaters on, listening to Harry Potter. Buzz didn't wake with the rain. He didn't wake with our splashing in and out of the tent. (It was over our ankles by this time). Eventually all that remained in the tent was Buzz asleep in his travel cot and us. Once woken, and rather unaware of the whole palava, Buzz sat and ate a banana whilst we tipped the water out of the tent and folded it as best we could and squeezed it into the back of the car and drove off. Despite being a working farm apparently, and it being about 6am by the time we had finished, no lights were on at the farmhouse so we just scarpered!

Sitting feeling cold and damp in front, and hearing clamours for some food from the back, we stopped at McDonald's for some breakfast. Refusing to get out of the car in my muddy pyjamas and woolly cardigan, we drove through looking I can only assume, like a bunch of vagrants, and sat and warmed ourselves with bagels and hot chocolate.

We then drove to Granny Jacks to use her shower as a) we had turned out hot water off when we left, and b) we don't have a shower!

The nightmare finally over, we headed home to unpack and attempt to dry my parent's tent out...