We'll follow it with something calm and relaxing; a report of a caravanning holiday. As we're just back from a very successful trip, we'll start with our most recent trip first and work backwards.
Our latest adventure started with our annual trip to the Greenbelt Arts Festival - not at Cheltenham race course this year, but at a new venue of Boughton House, just outside Kettering. We enjoyed the varied programme, although missed a decent headline act on MainStage, and we were surrounded by beautiful grounds and countryside. When it rained all day and night on Monday, we did discover the downside of the new venue; a lack of indoor facilities and permanent infrastructure.
When we left Kettering, we headed for Stratford on Avon to indulge our passion for horse racing. We'd discovered that there was jump racing at Worcester on the Wednesday and jump racing at Stratford on the Thursday. This was just perfect for us. We decided to base ourselves for a couple of days at Stratford, as rather conveniently there is a caravan site at the race course.
We got a great pitch right beside the course and we were right beside the first jump and hurdle which gave us some great spectator sport when the groundsmen came to get the jumps ready for racing. As you can see the sun was shining and the site was nice and quiet, so we were happy as Larry.
We hadn't been there long when a man came and roped us in, although we were left a car sized exit hole. This was because the disabled car park was being marked out and we were located right in the middle of it.
As Stratford is famous for it's waterways, we spent some of our time between race meetings, walking both the River Avon and the Stratford Canal. We'd been on both previously in a canal boat and recommend both as they are very attractive stretches of water.
When it came to Stratford race day itself, we had to move the Bearmobile and Ribs to the centre of the racecourse, so the disabled car park could be used.
We were the only caravan that moved, so we had the centre of the course to ourselves ....
... that was until a helicopter flew in and landed just the other side of the fence to us. We don't often get such a close up look at these amazing machines, so it was quite fascinating, if rather noisy.
We're used to Ribs turning quite a few heads and getting some admiring looks, as she's quite a characterful caravan, but this was a first ...
... as the horses went round the parade ring, they quickly spotted her with her roof sticking up like a periscope and there were quite few ears pricked up in interest. You can hardly blame them.
We think Ribs enjoyed her day at the races as much as us.
Lots of love, George, Yorkie, Patrick, Curly, Gio, Bris and Olaf xxxxxxx
