Pip, Laurie and I spent our last free weekend before we’re in the drop-zone by going camping as a family of three for the last time. As it was the Tilmanstone Church Fete that weekend we camped outside Folkestone, and my Mum & Dad came in their motor-home as well.
We had a very English weekend – here’s our checklist!
- Sitting in a tent in the rain
- Scampi and chips in a pub
- Sandy beach and sandcastles in the sun
- Half a mile of thick mud between the end of the sand and the start of the sea
- Church fete
- Live jazz
- Punch and Judy
- Losing at tug o’ war
- Barbecuing after the weather’s gone cold
- Rowing boats
- Blackberry picking (from rowing boats, extra points)
- A picnic
- A steam train ride
- A miniature railway ride
- A miniature steam train ride (extra points)
- Climbing a lighthouse
- A shingle beach in the drizzle
- A cream tea on top of the White Cliffs of Dover, overlooking France.
The full gallery is here.
[...] Port Lympne’s special feature is that most of the herbivores roam free on a large hillside park and you take safari drives through it, on off-road trucks. You won’t get much of a shot from these as they don’t stop very long at any point. We had an open-sided land rover which didn’t have to stick to the regular route or schedule, so we got closer to the animals and more time with them. I still didn’t get any good shots from any of the drives though. If you get the right angle, you can photograph a large African herbivore (rhino, giraffe, zebra, gnu etc.) with a thatched cottage, two nuclear power stations, a small-gauge steam railway, a lighthouse and the English Channel in the background. I don’t know why they don’t make more of a feature of this possibly unique possibility. [...]