When the campsite goes camping

Our campsite is small, very rustic with clean, pretty, basic amenities but no "unnatural amusements", so it stands to reason that we need something as a contrast when we go camping ouselves. Hey Presto..... off we went on a camping trip to Woodlands near Dartmouth with a whole posse of Hayle Surflifesavers .

It was only our second year joining the trip but it has just what we want. It's Big by our standards! Still quite rural,with the theme park being set in a wooded valley and the campsite set in large flat fields up on the surrounding hillside. Purpose built, plumbed in hot showers and baths, washing-up facilities and toilet blocks.  Lots of entertainment, waterslides, swing boats, mirror halls, troll caverns, peddleboats, gokart-bikes, assault courses and indoor ball pools,rope playgrounds and an amusement room up near the tents. Food and coffee kiosks if you want them and a Sainsburys only 9 minutes away by car!  Fabulous!

The campsite son is now of an age he can hook up with friends and be virtually independent in his travels round the park which makes it much less hectic for me, meaning I can chill in a chair and people watch, getting caught up in the laughter and happiness of it all.

And as if there wasn't enough excitement by day, by night there was a bush-tucker trial, which this year involved no nasty savouries, such as snake entrails or bulls eyes or bat droppings, to taste by blindfold. This year the tasting pleasures were pure chocolate and sweet treats. Lots of and great fun. How noone was sick, when they laid down to bed in their tents was beyond me!

The weather, true to form was variable, we travelled up in torrential rain, but it eased off a bit, to a light drizzle, whilst I erected the tents in the growing dark.  Three tents later, air beds inflated and the children settling into their beds, I did allow myself a well earned glass of vino, whilst visualising the next day's rides! 

Fortunately the tents did not leak and the airbeds did not deflate. But it was cold.  You forget how different the temperature is camping in June or July, compared to camping in September. Second night I went to bed more prepared,  2 pairs of socks, mittens, pyjamas, cardigan, fleece, sleeping-bag, blanket and coat over my feet...much better! Mental note to self to take hot water bottle next year and a duvet, despite the 3 season sleeping bag. Also mental note, that although the pop up tent is fantastically easy to put up, when erecting 3 tents, it also is colder, since it has no inner and seems to create more condensation on the inside, which, again in september is a dangerous thing at 4am in the morning when sneeking out for a wee!

Frenzied gardening and more bees

Frenzied gardening activities have been going on this week. It is our last week of the campsite being open and the horses have been in grazing overnight as we have had solid campers for several weeks and the paddock grass is looking more unruly than ever. This did mean one pair of campers putting up their tent the first night in the wooded glade so that the equines could munch on and mow and an adorable campervan actually had to find another campsite for the night, but the grass did need chomping!
It probably isn't the best time to be starting moving plants and planting out, but this time of year is quieter for me animal husbandry wise with the long days still and the weather is usually good - sunny days and rainy nights - and the ground is warm so I hope what I am doing survives. I have moved a fairly large tree fern from our tiny home garden which it has outgrown to the wooded glade. It was surprisingly difficult to get out the ground. No tap roots but a huge mass of fine spidery roots almost like hessian matting.

Having googled how to do it, I followed the instructions and ensured the ground was well watered and manured and have watered the treefern well since planting, but have to admit it is looking a little unhappy! Took a quick picture after planting whilst it was still looking luvverly. Unfortunately a northerly wind gave it a bit of a battering for 48 hours immediately after planting, so we will have to keep our fingers crossed. And my favourite acer which has survived in a pot for years in our small garden - but which always looses its leaves early - has also been given its own piece of ground and some freedom, so that is another to keep an eye on with the hope that planting out will help it keep its leaves longer next year.

Have finished a stretch of path to take campers safely up and down to the picnic area, instead of scrabbling up the side banks, planted some bulbs - although I am not sure what they are, we found them whilst digging and clearing the newest reclaimed area - so they will be a surprise in the spring and we also found some Tawny Mining Bees.

They were in the ground we were clearing which was full of ivy and periwinkle and rocks and stones and we didn't notice them until we had unearthed there larvae pods. We rescued what we could and fashioned a make shift home for them, which they don't seem to dislike too much. They have been there for 3 or 4 days now and they appear to be busily repairing what we disturbed.

According to our research Tawny mining bees (Andrena fulva or armata) are a species of the sand bee genus.  The males are 10–12 mm (0.4–0.5 in) and the females 8–10 mm (0.3–0.4 in) long.  Covered with fox red hair on their backs and black on their underside, they are not aggressive and seldom, if ever, sting. Indifferent about their nesting location, they are extremely fond of shadeless sunny places, but are also commonly found between tiles and stones in the garden and love well-cut lawns. The bees supposedly fly from March until June - so what ours are doing flying about end of August anyone knows.
Females mate in spring, after which the male dies and the female starts to build a nest. The nest is a vertical shaft in the ground of 200–300 mm (8–12 in), with several brood cells branching off it,  and entrances are often surrounded by a volcano-like mound of excavated spoil. The female fills the cells with a mixture of nectar and pollen, laying an egg in each cell.  The larva hatches and consumes the stored pollen and nectar, pupates within a few weeks and finally becomes an adult bee. The adult bees overwinter below ground in the burrow site. Then during the next spring or early summer the adults emerge, mate, and the females begin burrow excavation and the cycle continues.

Our colony definately has a female who is bigger, less hairy and slimmer than the males. But the males appear to be extremely busy little fellas, despite the time of year, which I suppose may be because we have distrubed them. It is true that we did not notice any activity before we unearthed their nest. Oh dear. Will keep you posted with what happens next.

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Whilst the campers were at play, we went away

Well, we have been away, but only for a couple of nights and we did leave our 'A team' in charge, although apologies to all those using the mobile phone number to contact the campsite, who got through to me in London! My youngest and I had a quick train trip to Guildford to see a much loved relative and also take in the Natural History Museum (with the rest of the world it seems) which was great fun. And in a sunny London too.

Despite living in London during my early adult years, I have never been to the museum before and loved the old building and its architecture. We thoroughly enjoyed our meander around - although were disappointed with the dinosaur room. There were plenty of dinosaur skeletons elsewhere in the museum, most far more impressive than those in the dinosaur room itself and the walkway in and through was thronging and slow and I did wonder how anyone would get to a casualty, should an "elderly" decide to have a heart attack in the midst of the queue? It was an interesting room, but perhaps not worth the wait on this particular day.

By far our favourite rooms were the room with the Blue Whale in - which we unfortunately didn't find until last - so if we ever go again, we will go there first next time and have an even better look before reaching "worn out" phase.  And the geological room. 

At this point I should apologise to my son's dad, because when he shows me cornish rocks and minerals, which his amateur geological mind finds interesting, I do tend to switch-off a little. However, I found it extroadinarily interesting to look at these rocks and pebbles in the cabinets and both  Dom and I were thrilled to see an exhibit just like a stone we have in a pebble and shell basket at home, labelled "Veined chert. Marazion beach, Cornwall, England"

And I found it highly amusing to have travelled all the way to London to discover a little history about a piece of flint in the same basket.  "Small flint nodules with holes were once threaded with string and hung around the end of the bedpost or the key of an outer door to guard against witches.  When used as such they were called 'hag-stones'.  However, they can be called 'lucky-stones' when attached to a horse's collar as a charm against disease.

Cornwall, England"

I do think a family railcard is good value and a weekend in London is just enough time to take in a little culture, introduce children to their capital city and enjoy the return home. No trip to London for Dom is complete without a ride on a 'Boris Bike', so after a picnic lunch in the garden at the Natural History and a quick snoop in the Victoria and Albert, we strolled up to Hyde Park and Dom cycled through Hyde Park to Hyde Park Corner, across to Green Park, down through St James' and across Horse Guards Parade and via Horse Guards Avenue to the Embankment.  He loves the bikes. Although this time we left the bike in a docking station on the Embankment, we made a mental note to ourselves that there were docking stations right outside Waterloo Station, from where our Guildford train comes and goes. 

We had toyed with the idea of a whirl on the London Eye, but when I had enquired in the morning as to whether there was a quiet time in the day to try and take the ride, the polite lady on the desk advised "october" was the quiet time! We did glance at the queue as we walked back across Hungerford Bridge, but saw a much more interesting ride and with no queue...................

No idea how we had missed noticing this summer fair at Jubilee Gardens, as we had headed along towards the Albert Embankment in the morning, but within this fair was, as Dom put it an "awesome ride" for £7.50 each which I considered as the last treat of the day, not too bad! 

Highly recommended we think. Gave us a spectacular view of the city and of the London Eye.

But the fun didn't stop there, because once returned home the boys have been busy constructing their own piece of engineering. Enter the go-kart Nik nak 1.

And when the road was closed in our village last week, which did make it a little confusing for our campers who had to take an alternative route to get to the campsite as the closure divided the village, we did have some fun!

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August - Fogou season

I cannot believe that we are already into August. The summer has gone so quickly and we are already half way through the school holidays. We have had a couple of tentovers, one required us to take shelter in the Old Water Shed in order to eat out of the rain.........cooking in the rain is much more difficult than on a sunny day and eating in the rain, even more difficult and a lot less fun. Might have to think of a resolution to this "eating on a damp day" conundrum for next season. But the kids seemed to have fun despite the drizzle and the sunny spells often come at the end of the day anyway, just in time to light a campfire.

Years ago when I first moved to west cornwall and started visiting ancient sites down here, such as Lanyon Quoit and the fogou at Carn Euny, we got absolutely drowned one day in a torrential downpour that seemed to arrive out of nowhere with an august sky that changed from bright blue to grey and full of rainclouds in the blink of an eye. Since that day our family has called such downpours "fogou days" and since they often happen in august, august has become "fogou season" in our vocabulary.
It's the rain that makes our county green though and a little inclement weather gives the parched grass time to recover and helps some of my planting along.  It also provides the opportunity for me to get down to the beach for a gallop in the rain on a fairly deserted bit of seashore. Thanks to an onlooker who snapped a rare photo of us having fun on one such wet day!

A couple of new signs have gone up. One is to signpost the "Old reservoir".  The reservoir is no longer in use, but we love people to have a nose and look at the fab arched red brick ceiling and have a go at creating an "echo" over the rounded doorway, but we also need to keep people safe, so, as suggested by some young lady campers we have now signposted the "Old Reservoir" to make sure people realise it is a deep dark space and the door is locked to ensure their safety.

We also have a new sign for the campsite itself, incorporating a horsey logo and our blog address on a sailflag to catch the eye and signpost our entrance. I love the way that when the flag is blowing around in the wind, the horse almosts looks like he is galloping.

And we have a new facility on the blog for followers to 'join' and 'connect' with each other, talk about camping with us, or holidaying in cornwall or even how camping in cornwall is similar or different with camping in another country.Since I love a good chin-wag with visitors at the campfire, I am rather excited about this "followers" development and hope people will use it and keep in touch.

Bell Tents to Bees

One of the reasons we have a campsite is because we love meeting different people and sharing their stories and campfire tales and adventures. June and July have been no different. So, thanks to everyone who has visited us so far this year. Worth a special mention were a couple starting a 3 month cycle ride from Penzance to Scotland, we were their first overnight stop and we felt very honoured - caught me mid flow cleaning the compost loo, with the ponies still mowing the campsite paddock! - but I quickly came to my senses and ushered the ponies out, abandoned the cleaning temporarily and showed them round.  Safe cycling onwards!

And a big thank-you to our lovely camping family from Ireland who fed us inspirational ideas from their family-sized bell tent, about how to pretty up the chain link fence. Haven't worked out how to take a picture yet that does it justice, but the fence now has solar butterfly and star lights along it and four sets of clothes lines for drying towels and wet suits etc with "ditsy" pegs festooned along the washing-lines.

Our ethos for having a small campsite is that we have a small but "perfect piece of cornwall" that we are very happy to share with people who are looking for a place to camp and looking for somewhere simplistic, that holds onto the basic principles of camping and "getting away from the city" whilst providing some of the niceties, like a hot shower (ours has a leafy canopy) and a comfy changing-room with mirrors to sort your hair and beard and a loo you don't mind using. We like to think ashfarm has an ambiance about it that lends itself to a variety of campers, couples, families and singles alike, but bottom principle is it is a place where we as a family would also like to camp. We do not have a shop or pub or games room on site and there is no electricity, but our campfires can be vibrant and friendly and full of chatter and laughter and campers can make the evenings as long, or as short as they like. Even when the weather is hot and sunny and there is no need for a fire, the firepit with its tree-trunk benches can be a central space to share each others company.  There are reclaimed bricks too, for use either in the fire or as wineglass or beer bottle coasters. A contingency of australian driven camper vans recently shamed us, by not only cooking a delicious casserole over the campfire, using a cast iron pot and the bricks to enclose the fire, but then griddled pancakes on the skillet lid in the morning. Come back again!

Regular use of the firepit has caused us a bit of a hiccough, that being that we may run out of wood! So to ensure that there is a plentiful supply for the rest of the camping season we have had to chop and bag up wood at the cost of £3 per bag, rather than leaving logs in a pile as a freeforall. Kindlers and collectable sticks are free and most people cheat slightly by bringing a firelighter - very acceptable play - so campfires are available but with a sustainable supply of wood.

We have had a lot of 'firsts' this month. Thanks to our first "engagement party" campers, who shared their company with us and were very kind about our site and facilities. We loved having you and were pleased the campsite could join in your celebratations and make your get together special. (If you have any photos you want to share on our blog please email them to me.) Congratulations to the couple in question! Your pending booking and an earlier visitor book entry had spurred us on to hang a curtain in the changing-room to give the people a little more privacy whilst they changed, since the frosted glass wasn't fullproof. We think it looks perfect.

We also had our first Harley Davidson on the site and I am hoping to be able to add a picture of the said fabuloso machine in due course. What a lovely sound as it purred up the driveway!
Had our first tent camping all by itself too. A family stayed for 3 nights and then simply left their tent for a further 3 nights, all on its lonesome. We have now taken it down and put it in storage until the family remember they have left something behind! We are now on day 6, poor lonely tent!

We don't mind if your tent is on site alone, whilst you gamble off elsewhere for a night, so long as we know. Tents generally need moving after 4/7 days so the grass underneath does not spoil and we think it reasonable to levy a 'tentcare' cost, should you not be sleeping-over in it, equivalent to one adult tariff for each night it is here alone.

The fields behind the site are now tall with barley and look a picture. For those who are inquisitive and like strolling around hedgerows, there is a rough stile in one corner of the wooded glade that leads into the field beyond and if you follow the hedgeside down, you join a footpath, which takes you left and across fields, down a single-track lane and back up through the woods, returning you to the church and back across the fields to us. It's a lovely 40 minute evening's walk.

The barley may not yet be ready for harvesting but the farmers locally have been hard at work making hay and we have had our winter's supply for the horses delivered. I love the smell of new hay, "'handsome" they might say here! The farm cats also think it is handsome and have immediately claimed it as their own and made themselves comfortable in it.

We have been treated to another beastie making themselves at home with us too, although their sojourn with us lasted only a couple of days. Bees! Our Harley Davidson camper mentioned to us he had seen a huge swarm of bees buzzing over the campsite and low and behold the very next day the dogs came across a selection of bees starting to make a hive in one of the old water connection grates. The pup almost got her nose stung as she investigated where the buzzing was coming from and the collie managed to get a bee stuck in his fur coat which drove him to destraction until I could find it and flick it out. It did feel a bit of a "gift" having them choose our glade to make a hive, but I was also quite relieved they decided we weren't ideal for making honey and travelled on to find a new home.

For now, we have a couple of days with only one camping visitor, so he has kindly decanted his tent into the glade and we have opened the gate to the ponies, for them to mow the campsite paddock, before our next lot of guests arrive. Summer camping in the sunshine.....luvverly!

Golowan

Mazey Day last saturday. (http://golowan.org)

I love Golowan and the processions, the carnival effigies, the colours and noise, the dancing, the beat of all the music, especially the Samba Band, the stalls and the Mazey special offers in the shops, fab! Came home with yummy olives, arty cards and cushions and a blanket for the Old Water Shed.

 Am really happy with this space. It has been transformed from the concrete block shell that it was when we took over as custodians of the land - no door or window left in the structure and with ivy hanging so far over the doorway you had to duck to enter - into a very pretty and comfortable changing-room, with mirrors, a corner-bench (now with pretty cushions) a daisy-glass window and glazed door. Chuffed!

Although spoilt by the continuous sunny days at the beginning of June we have had some wet days since, but with some sunny spells to remind us summer is here! Our campers, seem to have managed to dodge most of the showers though, sleeping through the misty nights and making the most of the scenic walks, coastal paths and taking time to investigate the bookshops and art galleries on the days that were a bit "iffy" weather wise. And we have been treated to a huge moon for the last few days. Big bonus of no electricity at the campsite is that on clear nights, the stars and moon can be seen at their best.

Our new copper black hens have just started laying, incredibly dark brown eggs. Unfortunately the chickens no longer roam the wooded glade, we have had to protect them from Mr Reynard with a 7ft high fenced pen, adjacent to our campsite paddock. Not so picture-perfect to look at, but at least they are safe. And campers can still hear them clucking and chatting away with the geese and 'congratulating' themselves after laying their eggs.

And the puppy, Rowan, is growing and learning to be obediant, although her razor sharp teeth have turned my son's hoodies and T-shirts into cotton colanders! But a puppy always raises the "aahh" response with anybody doggy orientated who camps with us (don't worry though, for those not doggy orientated we keep her on a lead and out the way) and for those visitors who camped with us last year and loved our Large Black pigs,  I am afraid she is the nearest we are getting to a "black piglet" this summer on the farm!

A fantastic start to the 2013 season

Well the campsite is open and what a fantastic first week. The weather has been superb.  We have had seven continuous days of blue skies, sunshine and warmth, allowing for evening meals al fresco, sunny days on the beach and exploring St Michael's Mount. The first tents have arrived and we have been busy with our own "home-grown" family testing out our facilities - look out for their review, to see what they think.






A deadline always works well for us, so it was all-steam -ahead in the last few weeks to make up for lost time. The winter weather delayed our plans, with it being too wet to get the the new water pipe put into the wooded glade and resite and improve the shower, but it is all done now and the end result we are rather proud of.

We now have our posh compost toilet and the hot outdoor shower adjacent to each other.  There is a second mains water tap and sink, with one in the campsite padddock and one by the shower. And the Old Water Shed has morphed into a family sized changing-room. It does still need tiles on the floor and some more furniture, but it is very functional as it is and lovely to be able to shower under a leafy canopy and then step into a warm room to dry and dress.

There is new grass seed spread over the reclaimed areas and we look forward to this 'greening' up as the summer progresses. To protect these areas a little, a new gravel path guides you from our washing and changing facililities back into the campsite paddock.

There is a new gate, so you can walk between the campsite paddock and the wooded glade more easily. The picnic area is still there with a view of the Mount over the village rooftops and church tower (that view is captured in an earlier blog).  And ofcourse the campsite paddock itself, which is much as it was last year, minus the pigs, with their pig-pen now reclaimed and growing new grass.

We have had our first barbeques and camp fires...forgot the marshmallows though!

And our Beach Fun Run was also a great success, with 42 children running their hearts out and collection their medals on the beach at Marazion.

So, we are all set for a summer season and ready to meet and great our campers, with lots more blogs to come.