Porthcawl

At the end of April the family, minus Jo, plus Liam Pitt and Louie went on holiday to a little holiday park in Porthcawl, South Wales. It was good to get away for a few days- even to this "Haven" type site. And before you start, I haven't got anything against Havens! Our holidays, when the kids were young, were always at Havens- the "Tiger Club", in house entertainment teams and family rooms where you had to get in early to get a decent seat! Now the kids are older, I thought we'd moved on... Obviously not!

The site was even selling mobile homes- some were very nicely done...the only alarming thing was Kaz saying we should sell the house, "when the kids leave" (WHEN THE KIDS LEAVE???? AS IF!!!!) and move into one of these! I had images of me having to sell or dump all my books. I came out in a cold sweat and felt sick!

Wales. How beautiful is Wales? I was entranced. A couple of days into the holiday we managed to drag the kids to Three Cliff Bay. Truly wonderful despite the wind coming off the sea. The beach was unspoilt, golden sand and hardly a soul there. This was my favourite part of the holiday.

Forest School Experience

On Tuesday I went off for three days to the Brecon Beacon area of South Wales to do a practical assessment for the Forest School course I'm currently completing. A local volunteer with Sussex Wildlife Trust- Renzo, kindly gave me a lift. We had a really pleasant journey down and it turned out we had a lot in common. We knew some mutual people and had been at college at Sussex and Brighton at the same time so that was cool.

We saw several Red Kites as we drove into Wales as well as Buzzards- Renzo is a bit of a twitter so something else we shared!

We got to the youth hostel at Llanddeusant at about 3-4 pm. Others soon arrived. They were almost entirely from Renzo's 5 day intensive course. They were all, except one,pre-school women workers. I felt a bit reserved, clearly Renzo knew them but I didn't. After everyone had settled in we went for a meal in a village about 5 miles (?) away. After the meal we all went back to the hostel and went to bed because we had an early start.

Wednesday we got up and departed for the wood. The day was pretty full on. We had to make shelters- but these weren't the normal lean to versions I had learned at the Woodcraft School. These involved driving uprights into the ground with pole drivers. These shelters weren't coming down in a hurry! Most of the day was taken up with making these shelters and felling trees. Towards the end of the day we had to build our own fires and cook on them.

I was working with two women called Mary and Monica. Mary was older but was game and put 100% effort and got a bit frosty if she felt she was being patronised... hopefully it wasn't me that did that. Monica was an interesting German woman with a lot of camping experience. I think we got on pretty well. The idea was to sleep in the shelters that evening. Monica and mary slept in ours- I put up a hammock and basha and slept there instead. I realised part way through the day that I had lost the mini digital video camera- it played on my mind all day. After dinner, some of the woman went back to the hostel and I went with Dez back with them. A nice guy at the hostel had found my camera and handed it in.

The following day was Burma rope bridge building and underground cooking. Before I knew it the time to depart was here and we set off back to Brighton. I passed the assessment, which was cool! Now only two other things to do and I'm finished...and hopefully qualified.