Five go on an adventure part 1

For the August bank holiday weekend me, the bear, mad sister and the quiet man (her boyfriend) and lovely guy (quiet man's best friend) went on a camping and walking trip to North Wales.

Charleze (our faithful C5) was bulging at the seams with tents, sleeping bags, mats, mattresses, etc, with pillows and extra detrius spilling over onto the back seat, making for a cosy 6 hours in the car - at least for those in the back! Departing on the Friday afternoon, we hoped to beat the traffic, but it became swiftly obvious that our cunning genius was neither cunning nor genius, and that astonishingly, many more thousand weekenders had also taken an extra afternoon off work to get the edge. Who'd've guessed?

Still, the mood was good; our new gadget to transmit from our MP3s onto a radio channel ensured a steady stream of music paletable to our (or at least my) ears; and some rare sunshine bouyed our spirits. Lots of Famous Five jokes flew around the car - Five go on an adventure, lashings of ginger beer, etc, etc - although no-one wanted to take the role of Timmy the dog.

We had picked out our campsite over the internet during the week, selected for the fact they allowed campfires, and rolled up to its gates just before 8.00p.m; luckily still with an hour of light to go in which to pitch out tents. The campsite was the most populated place we'd seen in at least an hour, and had a festival feel about it. We were greeted at the gate by a bevvy of Australian workers (What does Pom stand for? Answer: Miserable Pommy Bastards. What do we call Australians? Answer: bar staff) who were jovial and welcoming, and with something akin to Blitz spirit informed us that vehicles were not allowed onto the fields as they were already in such a state. Minutes later, we discovered what they meant. At the bottom of a valley, with nowhere for the water to go but into the earth, the fields were totally waterlogged, and bordered by mudpits where the vehicles were allowed to park. My toeless sandals, and the mad sister's flipflops quickly proved to have been the wrong footware for the weekend!

An hour later though, we had the tents up, mattresses blown, sleeping bags unrolled, and a fire burning in a hastily dug pit (courtesy of a weed-smoking business lecturer from Manchester who's true passion was the slate slopes of Snowdonia), and while there was already plenty of water beneath us, the skies were for now being merciful. After a box of wine, and a meal of pasta and sauce that was far tastier than I would've expected, we were all very merry and contented, and the promise of a fantastic weekend ahead of us.