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Hugest thanks to Sarah - you pulled it all off brilliantly. Fantastic location; marvellous organisation; lovely company. It was a lot of work and worry for you, but I hope you know how much of a success it was by everyone's thoughtful words here.
We were a bit rubbish - arrived lateish (got lost, but got tugboated in by HW, the 4th emergency service), and had to leave fairly early the next day (shame we missed the Sunday visitors); but had a ball on Saturday night!
I feel a bit guilty that we didn't contribute as much as others, but running around after two toddlers doesn't leave much time for anything else! And we also didn't even manage to get the camera out of the car...
Weather was a little on the grim side, but enough respite to cook some barbie, and have a few drinkies in reasonable comfort. The views are stunning in the rain as well!
Fab meeting you all in real life - it was a bit out of character for me to 'do' something like Grapstock; but I'm truly glad we did.
Also a big thanks to lynda who carried on valiently despite my 8year old adopting her and hanging on her everyword!! Apologies for not intervening and rescuing you, but I had to be "stationed where I could see my 5year who was obsessed with porterloos and the flush mechanism!!!
Sorry if they were a pain to any of you!!!!! But sincere thanks if you took them under your wing!! They had a ball too. Jack is the biggest lynda fan going I think!!!
xxx
is home, and is under the distinct impression i may actually be dead .... but will confirm whether that is the case tomorrow ..... night night xx
I've occasionally wondered (in a few deep dark moments) how you actually know that you are dead. Is that the reason for ghosts? People not realizing that they are dead? SORRY FOLKS, random musing.
Gah! Just been trying to load all the pics into an album, but they're too big and resizing them all is going to take some time...
Anyway!
Friday: I went up with 'stuff' while Jez went to pick up Lynda from the station, and my friend brought up her big barbie and some big plywood boards to cover the muddy field entrance. And so began the 'set-up'. Or. It would have done, if we hadn't discovered that the field we were to camp in was full of flippin' sheep! Not part of the plan, but Pops had been away all week and when he came back, there they were! After several phone-calls to the farmer receiving no response, Lynda's lovely (but slightly deaf!) little dog Poppy got right into the spirit of things and helped us to round them into the next field so we could get cracking.
People soon began to arrive after that, and had to dodge the sheep on the way through. JackieJ first picked up by Jez, and then LD and her lovely hubby, the BarleySugar family, Pumpkin Becki and Mr PB, Tricky and his son and Gojiberry and his wife. It was quite breezy but everybody managed to get their tents up, except LD, who had brought the most fantastic vintage 'fold-up' caravan (same age as me ) which we all fell in love with almost as much as it's occupants!
By this point it was getting dark, and we were all getting a bit worried about Ailsasyl and HappyBunny. Luckily they had JackieJ's mobile number (because I, quite shabbily, had forgotten to give them mine ) and we got a text saying that they had overshot the turn-off and weren't sure how to get back. Of course, my marvellous directions with photos were fairly useless in the dark! So Jackie and I hopped in the car and nipped down to meet them in a nearby pub car-park. With a bit of help from some car headlights and an all-hands-on-deck approach, they soon had their tent up, and after a quick brew from my stove, we all retired to shiver and shake our way through the night - the skies had cleared, and OMG it was cold!! I think I managed a sum total of 2 hours sleep, and others didn't fare much better... Around 4am, the clouds reappeared and things warmed up a little, but of course, that brought the rain along too...
Hahahaha i just remembered we were busy putting up sarz tent when a face appeared over the wall and shouted is this grapestock lol It was lottiedolly, they had got lost and had been driving around trying to find us.
Gardening ..... begins with daybreak
and ends with backache
I really should have hung bunting from the walls...
Really lost any oomph now, so will carry-on tomorrow. But I managed to get the pics into an album on my profile, so anyone not on FB can get a look too:
Yes I think so too Jackie; we didn't realise it wasn't the Sunday until Mr Z had made other plans......
Sarz; you are a total star. Honest to goodness how you didn't lose it over the weather - you were still chirpy and lively on sunday afternoon after hosting so many people all weekend.....Hats off to you...and not just because the wind blew them off.
Really good to put faces to names; and good to share out some seeds - just a shame to have missed some people but that's life I suppose!
has just been woken from the dead by ozzy who didn't bother looking to see that the door was open so he could wee .... is now going to die again quietly (see i can do some things without laughing .... honest) ..... wouldn't mind i was dreaming of being rescued from falling trees, by ollie the mad axeman, and from fireworks coming from the bonfire by some helpful passing fire men..... i was just about to drive off in the engine *tuts .... until tomorrow when a full weekend from your friendly neighbourhood fire starter shall hopefully be slightly less dead and write a full weekend report ........ night night xx
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