I'm back from my camping trip. We spent a week just outside Winchcombe in the Cotswolds and had fantastic weather for the whole holiday until last night when it pissed down all night and all this morning meaning we've had to pack up all our belongings and tent in the rain.
While everything was kicking off in airports all over the country we were treated to lots of low-flying aircraft ranging from Hercules to some variety of fighter plane shattering the peace and terrifying our daughter. The campsite isn't far from
Staverton airport and
RAF Brize Norton and there's a military base at Evesham, just up the road (no, I didn't pop in and harangue anyone about my
Evesham laptop).
While we were away we visited
Birdland, the
Cotswold Motor Museum (home to
Brum), the
Dragonfly Maze, the
Model Village (not worth the cost of entry) and
Model Railway (well worth a visit) at Bourton-on-the-Water. Bourton is apparently nicknamed the Venice of the Cotswolds because a river runs through the town and has been turned into a canal-type affair. It's a really nice town, very clean (despite being extremely busy with tourists) and definitely worth visit if you're in the area.
We also paid a visit to
Sudeley Castle but didn't get to tour the actual lived-in part of the castle (which is, unusally, most of it) as it was £15 per person including children for a guided tour and you could only get in on the tour. Nevertheless, the £20 we paid for a family ticket to everything else was worth the money. We got to see the gardens, the pheasantry and all the exhibitions. We also got to see the church which contains the tomb of Queen Katherine Parr, something I was keen to see for obvious reasons.
Our final day out was to
Cotswold Farm Park at the impressively named village of
Guiting Power. All four kids love animals so we always end up going to farms and zoos and this was one of the best we've been to so far. Even animal-addict kids can get bored of looking at animals and this place was like a mixture of a farm and a playground so there was plenty for them to do in between looking at the animals. The farm is a rare breeds conservation park and they've got lots of rare (almost extinct) breeds of all farm animals but most of the rare breeds were sheep. They had a really bizarre breed of sheep which grows up to 3 pairs of horns!
I had a disagreement with a toilet seat at the park which left me with an extremely painful and personal injury that looked like a bite mark and bled on and off for about 24 hours. Gents, you can uncross your legs now; ladies, stop laughing it was painful.