Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Camping in Dorset

The summer holidays are over and I'm about to wake the girls up to send them back to nursery after a looong break (six weeks? eight? thirty two? I lost count a while back). It's been a really good summer holiday actually and the return to nursery sort of sneaked up on me. I have really enjoyed spending time with the girls who are not nearly as trying as they were during the easter holiday, which nearly killed me. It helps that they've stopped trying to kill each other. For a while (about six months) we were woken every day by their fighting before they had even got out of bed and it just continued all damn day, descending every five minutes into screaming, sobbing, hitting and gouging. Thankfully they are going through a truce period and life has become a lot nicer around here. (Notice how I didn't say 'thankfully that has passed'? Mama ain't no fool.)


At the beginning of the summer we took the girls camping in Dorset. Some of you might remember our last attempt to go camping with them; 'a fiasco' would be an apt way to sum it up. This time was better. For a start we let a good two years and two months pass (HAHAHA to our plans to introduce W&P to camping young, for it to be a regular and cheap family holiday, to buying a new tent when they were a year old under the justification that 'it will get so much use'.) For another, this time we were visiting a friend who has land and on that land she has a large, semi-permanent tent with two sleeping compartments - one for each kid. Meanwhile we slept outside it in our three man tent; absolutely no trying to sleep all four of us in one space. It did feel like cheating, I'll admit it. Our friend's tent had sleeping platforms, mattresses and curtains around each bed and a kitchen area... it was far removed from our wild camping of yore. My guilt that we were 'doing it wrong' was short lived though, it dissipated the first night that we put the girls to bed at bed time and they stayed put, and slept! To our credit we didn't use the kitchen area once, we cooked all of our meals outdoors on either a camping stove or a barbecue. 'All our meals' translates to '174 burgers and 68 sausages'. It was a good week. 

The little corner of Dorset that we were staying in was pure heaven, it was England in perfection - fields, forests, rivers, farms, cliffs, beaches, tiny stone houses, villages with twisty streets, fruit farms... there were definite murmurings about leaving London and starting an orchard or a flower farm or a camp site, or pretty much anything that would let us live like this all year long and let our children grow up tanned and wild and free, like my friend Flora's beautiful, funny, wild and free kids, who live a mere handful of miles from where we stayed. A life of beaches and barbecues and axe skills and eating peas, raspberries and (in W&P's case) courgettes straight from the plant.

Here are some pictures. Sorry they're a bit shit, they're all from my phone. I took a film camera with me but the film has been added to the 10 year old pile of unprocessed rolls and goodness knows if it will ever make it to the lab. I suck at photography. 




19 comments:

  1. THESE are your BAD photos? Heaven forbid you show us some good ones ever or I may fall over and die from glory.

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    1. :) Well, they're still good pictures but they're terrible PHOTOS, from a quality/sharpness/photographer point of view. But I'll accept your compliment and be quiet now. #asimplethankyouwillsuffice

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  2. Ha! Thank you for describing them as tanned and wild and free :) Certainly wild. Also rude. And needy. Always so needy. But they are kind of lovely with it.

    Your pictures are so beautiful, I'm very glad Dorset scrubbed up nicely for you and the sun came out, I do hope you will be lured in this direction again x

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    1. They ARE lovely! Proper kids should be a bit rude and very wild. These blog kids who are all picking daisies and singing you songs and hosting dainty little tea parties scare me. What has been done to brainwash the wildness out of them? Shudder.

      And we'll definitely be back!

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  3. That sounds so lovely. I've been dreaming of moving somewhere with forests and fields and rivers, too. The city can be a very trying place, at times. Especially the cost of living.

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    1. The city IS tiring. I'm starting to feel very worn out by it.

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  4. Hot dang. I wish my photos could be as quarter as good as yours. That first one took my breath away! Screw you and your bad photos lady!!! xsx

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    1. Thank you! I can't quite accept phone photography as producing pictures worthy of being seen on a real screen, but I'll work on letting go!

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  6. Wow, you take excellent shitty photos! What a wonderful trip. I loved the guinea pig -- I bet that impressed the girls.

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    1. It impressed one of them. A thought it was lovely, E couldn't have cared less!

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  7. I have a photo (a real photo - yellowed and glued into one of those hideous photo albums with the peel back plastic coated pages) of my sister and I sitting together smiling, blonde, blue-eyed and oh so completely ignorant to the world around us. A parental perspective reminds me that we too were probably little sh*ts at times and I know we fought a LOT. Still - I have a sister and God knows where I'd be without her. She's kinda the best thing about me. ♥
    Awesome post Cara - and yes... let go - phone photos can be cool. ♥ ♥ ♥

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    1. Thanks, I'm trying! And I have a whole other post to write about sisters and sisterhood, thank you for reminding me.

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  8. And this is proof that being a photographer is not about fancy equipment but actually about having sackloads of talent. Damn you! (seriously, saving it for inspo)

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  9. The fact that you are somehow already managing to bring up girls who are wild and free while living in the city gives me hope. That said, if you move to a farm in Dorset you'll never manage to get rid of me. And your photography is always beautiful. The world through your eyes... damn.

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    1. Thank you for saying that my girls are wild and free. That made my day.

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  10. GOD W&P are SO BIG! Ok I didn't mean to type all of that in caps, but it just felt right.

    Time flies. These pictures are so beautiful. I'm very happy to hear that the years ahead are looking brighter than the years behind. :)

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  11. I disagree with your comment about your pictures. I think they are really good and capture your visit really well. Love the post too and Dorset is a great place to visit. Keep up the good work.

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play nice.