Sunday and Monday, 25 & 26 April
Where's Bertie? He's at Bennet's Wood Farm, a certified (5-van) caravan site not far away from Streatley (Berkshire). It costs £5 per night to stay here.
Weather: Mainly sunny both Sunday and Monday and warm enough when in the sun and out of the wind.
The last time we saw younger (step-)son and associated grandchildren was at the end of 2019. Clearly, there was good reason why we didn't see them in person in 2020, but now it had started to feel appropriate to see people again we arranged an al-fresco meet-up.
I thought we may as well make a few days of it with a short break in the Chiltern Hills and as Bertie had been taxed earlier in the month, we selected him to provide us with our accommodation. By Wednesday, that will be a whole five nights' use he's had in the last 14 months. Poor chap must wonder what he's done to deserve this fate after all his prior adventures.
As it went we had trouble sourcing a campsite (mainly a failure to answer phones, one incidence of fullness and one incidence of 'How much?!'), which narrowed the options to Bennets Wood or the Caravan Club site at Henley-on-Thames. It wasn't the bargain price that swayed us to come here (on gut feel, I fancied Henley), but having planned a running route from both locations, the one from Henley looked too much of a navigational faff, whereas from here The Ridgeway surely will be easy to follow?
We left home on the dot of 8 o'clock yesterday morning and arrived on the dot of 11am, which was convenient, being exactly on time. We would have been early if it hadn't been for the roadworks on the approach to the M4 and the diversion that started with a suddden cry by the navigator (swiftly following an instruction of 'left at the roundabout') of 'Nooooo! Weight limit!'.
A lovely day was had catching up with everyone, picnicking in the sunshine and walking the dogs though the local woodland, before we made our way back past Reading to this site near Streatley. The directions in the Sites Directory weren't exaggerating when they referred to the last 1.5 miles of the approach as 'narrow and winding'. You wouldn't want to meet anything coming the other way, although judging by the grass and detritus in the middle of the road, it'd be bad luck if you did.
Knowing this site to be just a farmer's field with a tap and a drain, I had in my mind a lowland field, enclosed by hedges. It was thus a surprise to arrive to find we had this view from Bertie's windscreen:
Blue skies, red kites circling above, almost total peace and a view like that for £5 per night. What a rarity in the UK! The only small downside (literally) is that the field is on a slope that's a bit too much for our levelling blocks to flatten out. Oh, and we're up against the woodland, which is shading our solar panel, but hopefully enough rays are getting through to replace the small amount of power we've been using.
Not much has been done today, having opted to spend the morning drinking tea, reading our books and just enjoying being in Bertie again. This afternoon we took ourselves off for a stroll, which turned into a 6ish-mile circular walk, taking in the route we plan to take tomorrow to get to The Ridgeway. Hopefully the photos convey what a lovely, sparsely populated area this is.
There are houses, mainly dotted around in ones and twos, some in unexpected locations, and almost all of them eliciting an exclamation of "isn't that lovely?" from me as we passed. Unfortunately, I failed to take a snap of any of them, although I did take this one of a grand gateway and impressively trimmed yews:
Where's Bertie? He's at Bennet's Wood Farm, a certified (5-van) caravan site not far away from Streatley (Berkshire). It costs £5 per night to stay here.
Weather: Mainly sunny both Sunday and Monday and warm enough when in the sun and out of the wind.
The last time we saw younger (step-)son and associated grandchildren was at the end of 2019. Clearly, there was good reason why we didn't see them in person in 2020, but now it had started to feel appropriate to see people again we arranged an al-fresco meet-up.
I thought we may as well make a few days of it with a short break in the Chiltern Hills and as Bertie had been taxed earlier in the month, we selected him to provide us with our accommodation. By Wednesday, that will be a whole five nights' use he's had in the last 14 months. Poor chap must wonder what he's done to deserve this fate after all his prior adventures.
As it went we had trouble sourcing a campsite (mainly a failure to answer phones, one incidence of fullness and one incidence of 'How much?!'), which narrowed the options to Bennets Wood or the Caravan Club site at Henley-on-Thames. It wasn't the bargain price that swayed us to come here (on gut feel, I fancied Henley), but having planned a running route from both locations, the one from Henley looked too much of a navigational faff, whereas from here The Ridgeway surely will be easy to follow?
We left home on the dot of 8 o'clock yesterday morning and arrived on the dot of 11am, which was convenient, being exactly on time. We would have been early if it hadn't been for the roadworks on the approach to the M4 and the diversion that started with a suddden cry by the navigator (swiftly following an instruction of 'left at the roundabout') of 'Nooooo! Weight limit!'.
A lovely day was had catching up with everyone, picnicking in the sunshine and walking the dogs though the local woodland, before we made our way back past Reading to this site near Streatley. The directions in the Sites Directory weren't exaggerating when they referred to the last 1.5 miles of the approach as 'narrow and winding'. You wouldn't want to meet anything coming the other way, although judging by the grass and detritus in the middle of the road, it'd be bad luck if you did.
Knowing this site to be just a farmer's field with a tap and a drain, I had in my mind a lowland field, enclosed by hedges. It was thus a surprise to arrive to find we had this view from Bertie's windscreen:
Blue skies, red kites circling above, almost total peace and a view like that for £5 per night. What a rarity in the UK! The only small downside (literally) is that the field is on a slope that's a bit too much for our levelling blocks to flatten out. Oh, and we're up against the woodland, which is shading our solar panel, but hopefully enough rays are getting through to replace the small amount of power we've been using.
Not much has been done today, having opted to spend the morning drinking tea, reading our books and just enjoying being in Bertie again. This afternoon we took ourselves off for a stroll, which turned into a 6ish-mile circular walk, taking in the route we plan to take tomorrow to get to The Ridgeway. Hopefully the photos convey what a lovely, sparsely populated area this is.
There are houses, mainly dotted around in ones and twos, some in unexpected locations, and almost all of them eliciting an exclamation of "isn't that lovely?" from me as we passed. Unfortunately, I failed to take a snap of any of them, although I did take this one of a grand gateway and impressively trimmed yews:
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Bonus snap for Conrad:
I'd never noticed a yellow latch on a kissing gate before. How funny to come across one only days after the discussion of the subject on Conrad's blog!
Yellow gate catch has exceeded my expectations. Good to see you out and about. That feeling of new exploration and finding secret sites is palpable from your writing.
ReplyDeleteJust being in Bertie again is lovely, and this trip was surprisingly good (not just because it was the first in so long, but because the area offered exactly what we wanted and more besides).
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