Seaford Beach

Fantastic day today. Warm and sunny and no rain after yesterday morning's downpour. I had a good night's sleep but Daisy's friend Charlotte said she only had 'five or six hours' which made me smile as I think that is a pretty good number for camping but when you are 15 and have never been camping before I suppose it's a culture shock. Good job she is having a trial run before her D of E.

After bacon sandwiches in the sunshine, we went for a long, long walk with the dogs. Daisy and Charlotte decided to stay behind and do some revision which sounded unlikely to me, but still. We walked for hours through fields filled with buttercups and Charlie loved it. We saw the Litlington Chalk Horse cut into the hillside, which was beautiful.

We stopped for tea in a little picturesque tea-shop and the children had ice-creams, then went back to the campsite for lunch. All the adults and he dogs were exhausted and we all dropped off either in tents or deckchairs under the gazebo. The children weren't though, they organised a mass game of cricket that took up a huge amount of space and made a huge amount of noise.

Charlotte had decided that she'd had enough practice for now, so went home on the train. The rest of us went to Seaford beach where we ran about with the dogs and Charlie had his first swim in the sea.

Pip disgraced himself by weeing on a Scout Leaders rucksack!! Luckily he didn't go ballistic (he had every right to) but brought out one of those collapsible water carriers and rinsed it off. I was very apologetic, though he's not my dog I was supposed to be in charge of him but it never occurred to me he would do such a thing. Anyway, the man was very nice about it. Perhaps as a Scout Leader he is used to being hardy and dealing with unexpected occurances. He certainly was 'prepared' anyway.

We stopped off on the way back to the site for fish and chips and mushy peas. It was de-vine. Nothing like seaside fish and chips eaten in the outdoors when you are starving hungry and pleasantly exhausted.

We all layered up, built another fire and sat up till very late. We toasted marshmallows, got very rowdy over a quiz and ate lots of chocolate and drank lots of wine. One of my favourite days of the year so far. Love my family and my wonderful friends!