7 July 2023 (Friday) - Off On Holiday

Surprisingly “er indoors ^TM” was wide awake when I woke at half past four. “Shall I turn the light on” I asked. She said “yes”.
The defence rests.

Mind you the dogs weren’t quite so keen. But we got the last of the luggage into the car and were away by quarter to seven as planned. I Munzed like a thing possessed up the motorway and we made good time. Bettter than others who had been delayed (!), so we succumbed to the constant whinging from the boot and stopped at Ingarstone services.
Once I’d eventually persuaded “er indoors ^TM” to use a parking space rather than randomly stopping in the road (!) the dogs did that for which they’d been whinging, and we carried on to the Colchester McDonalds where we all  met up. Brekkie McMuffins went down very well, and suitably scoffed we then drove on (following the wrong car in front – woops!) to the back of beyond where we stopped in a church’s car park and had a little geo-wander.

Sadly the “Oakley Round Robin” series of geocaches sums up where the ancient and noble art of hunting Tupperware is going wrong. There were eight caches over a distance where there might have been thirty. Some are missing, most are in disrepair. But because they are still on the geo-map they are sadly blocking the space that someone might use.
But nevertheless we had a good walk, and with walk walked it was only a short drive to The Swan in Hoxne where we had a spot of lunch, a few pints, and woofed at the locals.

Pausing only briefly to get supplies from the co-op we arrived at the brewery twenty minutes after their shop closed. But after some really pitiful begging from “Yours Truly”, the nice lady opened up for us. Forty bottles of beer, a couple of growlers and a bottle of gin later we set off to the holiday cottage which was fortunately only five minutes up the road.

Unloading didn’t take long; we were unpacked in about an hour or so. I found myself looking back to camping trips back in the day when setting up took over four hours and was frankly hard work.
Once unpacked we opened a growler. Have you ever opened a growler? They don’t half fizz. But eventually we figured out where we’d gone wrong, and had a rather good few beers and pizza as the dogs barked at the pigeons that dared to set foot in the garden. Morgan nearly had one…

The port was opened, as was the stilton, and it all got very vague. It was as well that I took one or two photos, wasn’t it?