Escape to Swanage....Part Two

"Do you want rice krispiiiieeeees? Do you want rice krispieeeees?" These are the words that wake us up Sunday morning...well when I say wake us up, I mean let us know that it's probably a reasonable time to get up after what can only be described as not my best nights sleep ever.

Around 2am our airbed (I said we were camping, I didn't say we were roughing it completely) had pretty much completely deflated leading to us root around the tent looking for the foot pump in order to pump the bed back up and restore comfort.

The only thing is, our foot pump seemed to be somewhat unhappy with us needing it at this hour of the morning and let out a scream in protest everytime we pumped it up and down..."eeee, eeeee, EEEEEE!" There went us subtly trying to blow our bed up, gawd knows what the rest of the campsite thought we were up to.

Once we were up we headed to a car boot sale, where we decided to have breakfast, a grotty bacon sandwich and a coffee served to us by a Patsy from Ab Fab style woman who say "Right, ok" after everything. Her sidekick in this marquee cafe is a clumsy woman with a vicar's wife haircut, a floral top and pink jeans who spends most of her time picking up whatever she has happened to drop on the floor, cup, teabag, anything else that comes in to her possession.

Next up is the traditional country practice of ferret racing- I bet on Bubbles, the mister bets on Diesel and after a tense few seconds....they're off, though it's not exactly the Grand National as the four ferrets in the race take their time to crawl down the tunnels. Eventually Diesel emerges the winner (beating Bubbles by a whisker) and wins Paul a pound, hooray!

Once we've checked out all the car boot stalls, we head off to Corfe Castle, where after a wander through the woods, past a field of the biggest cows I've ever seen we get to the stunningly old fashioned village of Corfe.
To the left is the castle and a knight complete with shiny colinder hat greets visitors at the entrance. We explore the castle ruins, and then settle down for a mini picnic of locally made sandwickes, crisps and juice...everything is produced locally here and it is all delicious!
Thanks to the sky opening up we spend the rest of the day driving around Dorset to avoid getting soaked.

Saturday night ended with a firework display, Sunday, the sky was full of a million stars and even more beautiful.

Escape to Swanage....Part One

Recently me and the mister packed up our little world, hopped in the car and set off on our adventure to spend the weekend camping, something we've had on our to do list for our entire relationship, yet had so far never done.

To pop our camping cherry, we headed to the beautiful little town of Swanage in Dorset. After a kind of long drive- gotta love bank holiday traffic and the M25 in general- we make it to Sandbanks to catch the ferry to Shell Bay...three minutes after the ferry sets off, we've made it to Swanage!

Another short drive and we've made it to the campsite where we're greeted by a man who looks suspiciously like one of our odd neighbours, a man well into his sixties with a head so full of hair that reaches halfway down his back!

The little spot we chose to build our temporary home on had the most beautiful view over the bay and surrounding countryside- a view better than any I've ever had in a hotel.



Swanage itself is such a cute little place, with a super chilled out vibe. Everybody we saw had that typical 'beachy' look about them, with tousled hair, shorts and vest tops...I think I spent most of the time more appropriately dressed for a mild winter, but hey ho.

Our first evening we spotted a restaurant right by the sea, no name, no walls, but a lot of customers. This turned out to be Gee Whites, the most fantastical fish restaurant ever, where fish and chips are served on newspaper and tempura prawns are accompanied by loads of sweet chilli sauce and it is just the most delicious food, magical setting and relaxing place to eat.


After a yummo nutella crepe from the stall next door, we made our way back to our tent just in time for a firework display to light up the sky over the bay, with us having the best seat in town and everybody in the campsite "ooohing" and "Aahhing" at the sparkly explosions in the sky.

A pretty fab way to end our first day in town me thinks.