Cook on a Campfire (Number 47)

One day in and first 'thing to do' in the bag.

Tir Bach Farm is a great little campsite, near Cardigan in Pembrokeshire.  We camped there for two windy, wet, cloudy, sunny, warm days in August 2012. 

The site has a communal campfire site and on 11 August 2012 we (and 3 or 4 other families) shared free-range Welsh sausages, corn-on-the-cob and & marshmallows on sticks around the fire. 

The kids ran madly around- Primrose, Claudia, Ella, Cerys, Jack and others- until way past their bed times and the stars came out in the dark Welsh sky.

One dad, whose name now escapes me, loved getting the wood, chopping the wood, stacking the wood and burning the wood and he kept us in campfires all week long until he left back to Bath.

There was that moment (familiar from scout camps) when the sun disappears on August nights and suddenly there is a chill damp in the air and you remember autumn is just about here.  But most of all we and the kids stared into the flames, chatted, told stories, ate and drank and felt a million miles away from roads, offices, schools and the building work on our house back home.

As the kids finally went to their sleeping bags we watched bats swoop along the hedgerows.  When we woke in the morning the woodsmoke clinging to our clothes and our hair reminded us of the time we had shared the night before.

One down.  49 to go.  Let's hope they are all as good as this.

The beginning....

...was at Lllanerchaeron in Ceredigion on 10 August 2012.  It was raining (it rained a lot those two weeks in west Wales) and our five year old daughter, Primrose, picked up a copy of '50 things to do before you're 11 3/4' in the National Trust shop.

I knew about the National Trust's attempt to get kids back in nature as adventurers, explorers and discoverers.  But it was all so obvious to me- 'we do this stuff already- don't we?'  As I read some of the 'things to do' to Primrose she was keen to do them- especially Make a Mud Slide (Number 20) and Make A Mud Pie (Number 13).

So we decided to do it: me, Primrose, Claudia (her two year old sister) and (I think she was keen) my partner, Jacqueline.  All before 5 February 2019 when Primrose turns 11 and 3/4

And this blog is my attempt to record it for all of us and make sure we do it.