The morning of Thursday 18th August dawned bright and hot.
Leaving home took longer than expected, partly because our eldest daughter was dithering about whether or not to come with us - having initially decided that she was joining us only 36 hours previously. Ultimately, lack of food in the house made her mind up and so, at 2pm, we finally headed to the local garage to adjust the car tyre pressures before returning home to hitch up the trailer tent and set off to our first destination.
We were delayed en route by my needing to get some urgent paperwork completed. In doing so I had to attempt to reverse whilst towing to exit a car park and had my fears confirmed - it's a difficult thing to do and will obviously take some practice. In the end my husband unhitched the trailer - injuring himself in the process - and turned the trailer by hand. After I had staunched the flow of blood from his left hand (thank heavens I had thought to check the first aid kit in the car was well stocked) we finally got on the road at 6pm. Not ideal, especially as we had rather hoped to be at our campsite by late afternoon.
We were heading to Postern Hill campsite for two nights, a Camping in the Forest site in Wiltshire, which we chose primarily because we wanted to visit Avebury stone circle.
The rest of our journey was, thankfully, very straightforward and we arrived at Postern Hill at 8.30pm as dusk was turning into full night. The campsite Manager came out of their motorhome to greet us and explain that we could pitch anywhere without an electric hook-up supply, as long as we kept a 6 metre gap between us and our neighbours.
What followed was 15 minutes of increasing panic as the car windscreen kept misting over due to the dropping temperature outside, making it difficult for us to gauge suitability of pitches available in the gathering gloom. In the end, finding ourselves almost back at the entrance, we pulled over and putting on head torches my husband and I went for a wander. Having discovered where several large (and unexpected dips) were we found a fairly level pitch in a slight clearing and unhitched the trailer tent and set about pitching by car headlight (not recommended!).
Fortunately for us, within 10 minutes we were approached by a lady camped nearby, who asked us how long we'd had our Conway and said that she'd never seen one so small(!). Then she asked if we'd like a hand in setting up and we gratefully accepted, which we discovered was our best decision that day when she turned out to be an old hand at trailer tents and knew lots of things we didn't - such as the bedroom compartment frame needing to be extended up and out - we had no idea given that we only possess 3 pages of faded photocopied instructions from the original owner manual.
By 10.30pm December and June were able to go to bed whilst we sat down and had a much needed cup of tea.
