6 May 2010 (Thursday) - Ponds and Gardens

I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a nightmare about being forcibly drafted back into the cubs to take command of the pack’s latest acquisition. A man-eating alligator. I’ve been told to blame this mental aberration on the vast quantities of port and cheese I devoured last night.

After brekky we set off back to Abbottsbury – on Tuesday we got tickets for the sub-tropical gardens, and today we thought we’d use them. On the way I made comments about sub-tropical being a cactus under a foot of water. If only…

“Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” sometimes describes her life as being “one tedious ordeal after another”. At the risk of being an old sourpuss, Abbottsbury’s sub-tropical gardens certainly qualify as a tedious ordeal. I’m sure that for those of a horticultural bent the place is wonderful. But I couldn’t tell one plant from another, and it was only finding a fish pond that saved the place (for me!)

Having played with the posh hand driers for a few minutes we went into the café. We laughed at the wierdie-beardie’s inability to pour out a bottle of beer. Mind you if I’d paid the four pounds they were charging just to get a glass of froth, I wouldn’t be very pleased either. We scoffed our jacket potatoes, and set off to Bum Point. Bum Point is the furthest extreme of Chesil Beach, and I was hoping to get a photo of me standing by a sign for the place, but the car parking was a tad expensive, so we gave up on this idea, and went to Bennett’s Water Gardens.

Billed as a series of ornamental ponds, I’d been looking forward to having a mooch around this place. And was disappointed. The highlight of the place was a rather tacky bridge which had been ceremonially opened by Paul Daniels. Clearly there was still a lot of work to be done on the ponds. And I consoled myself with the thought that the ponds were a work in progress and they would be nice when theu were done. On the way out there was a museum of the place. The ponds have been going for fifty years. They were rubbish. I’m sure that given a gang of volunteers I could have had the place looking far better in only a few weeks.

From the water gardens we could see a sign in the distance advertising a kite shop, so we drove over and had a look. And a chat with the nice lady. We came out with some kites. It had been rather windy all week, so we thought we’d play kites. As is always the way, at that moment the wind stopped, and did not blow again all weekend.

Back to the caravan site, and whilst the girls did girl things, we had a go at the crazy golf. I think I will use poetic licence to gloss over my score, but we had fun, which was the main thing. We again took a rather circuitous walk back to the caravan so we could have a nose at other people’s caravans, and then spent the evening watching Shawn the Sheep on DVD.