Our story starts at the end of 2019. A young(er) Kiri and Steve sat dreaming about recreating part of our motorhome road trip around Europe but this time with two little ones. Over the following weeks a plan began to form of a mini road trip around France, seeking aires near playgrounds and child-friendly areas. By February 2020 we had a rough itinerary and we’d even booked our ferries and were beginning to think about campsites for summer 2020… but then there was this emerging virus, so we held fire.

Fast forward to 2025. The road trip still hadn’t happened and now we didn’t have a readily-accessible motorhome in the family. However, with the promise of wider family holiday in a gite near Bordeaux, we recognised the opportunity for fulfilling those dreams. And so that is how we found ourselves in summer 2025 with me explaining to our children that the following day we would be driving our nearly 20 year old car on the right in France. As I began to get into the intricacies of the “priorité à droite” rule, Kiri exclaimed that she’d never heard of this rule before and was it new… which is exactly what she’d said every time we talked about it 10 years ago. Ah, happy memories.

With passports created for all of the cuddly toys we were taking with us, our heavily laden trusty 2006 Toyatater Yaris trundled towards Portsmouth with camping stuff in the roofbox and not an inch of room to spare. It turned out there was nothing in the handbook covering how to change the speedo from mph to kph… but eventually we found out that you need to press the trip meter reset button for more than one second while the odometer is displayed… but the headlights must be turned off! Weird.

Once on the ferry soon after 11, we set up camp for a 6 hour crossing. We managed to exhaust the “entertainment” options (restaurant, bar and minimal outdoor space) on the boat that was smaller than expected, so we played a board game then ate our packed lunch at 1140. By 12 Kiri was saying she was bored, which I interpreted as “on board”… which was very true, so we got out some activity books for the kids and did some sketching and reading. However, the yaw, pitch and roll (slightly different from shake, rattle and roll) didn’t combine well with these close focus activities, so we took plenty of wanders outside.

At 1400, the screen came out for additional entertainment, as Kiri finished her overpriced coffee with a look that communicated both disdain at what she’d just drunk, yet also lament that it was now gone. By 1600 (5 hours in), we’d eaten all of the snacks we’d prepared and with a ham sandwich costing more than a shower on board, we were glad when the Le Havre Pilote arrived by helicopter to manouevre us into the harbour at 1615.

“Wow, France is so different” was the exclamation from our eldest as we returned to the car deck of the ferry (without actually being able to see any of France), but it certainly was different as we drove on the right the short distance to our Airbnb at Fontaine-la-Mallet. I surprised myself with a fully French conversation that I had with the owner where I managed to understand he was recommending a trip to Honfleur just 20 minutes away, and I was able to respond that I went there when I was 12! However, our stomachs were ready for food, so we re-heated the frozen meal we’d brought with us and cooked some pasta before heading out to Spar to grab some food for breakfast.

Despite a meltdown from our youngest at bedtime (in their defence it had been a very long day and it was way past their normal bedtime), Kiri and I managed a fraction of an evening as we shared a wee drop of wine and started to plan the journey to Paris the next day. We found a maze on the map… but we realised it was probably bedtime when the best answer I could give to the question of “where is it?” was “near France”.

Chocolate brioche was to provide the fuel to get us to Lidl the next morning where we stocked up on bread, cheese (kiri and boursin) and some veggie bits for lunch and dinner before hitting the route nationales / départementale as we weren’t in a rush. Well, not with the driving anyway. Just before lunch time one of kids without warning declared they needed the loo urgently… we spotted a place where a landrover had pulled off the road up ahead and followed it… only to alarmingly scrape the chassis of our car on the edge of the road. Deciding this was not the best place to stop, we hastily returned to the road and found a more appropriate spot a couple of kilometres further on. Noticing the car also seemed to be relieving itself of fluids with an intermittent drip, we opened the bonnet to identify the source… which fortunately was the air conditioning. Panic over. 20 minutes later we found a lovely spot by a river to have lunch on a bench where we introduced the kids to the cheesy version of their Mum, whilst realising that without a fridge, we had a lot of boursin to consume!

Now reeking of garlic, we swapped drivers and headed down the very straight D6014 towards Paris, stopping at a maize maze for some added entertainment in the form of getting lost, interspersed with some wooden games. If there had been more time, we would have done the whole thing, but as there was an option half way around to stop and we had a campsite to get to, we ducked out.

It turns out the maze had prepared us well for getting lost slightly in Paris on the way to the campsite – first we missed a turning, then there was a height restriction that would have removed our roof box, so we saw one bit of road at least 3 times from different directions, but eventually we got to the campsite.

If we’d had a motorhome with supplies on board, this would have been a brilliant location. However our pitch was essentially plastic matting, so pitching a tent wasn’t the easiest. And we’d read there was a supermarket on site, so we’d hoped we could get some meat for tea there… well the options were salami or sausage… and the beers were Heineken or Kronenburg. We bought cheese and tried to pay for it by card… only to be told there was a 10 Euro card limit. We hadn’t got cash out by then, so unfortunately we were forced to buy a bottle of wine if we wanted cheese.

After roughly pitching our tent and cooking some dinner the kids headed off to the play area and soon made friends with another family. As we chatted to their parents, it turned out neither party had been given full details on check-in – they’d been given details of timetables and travel for getting into the city that we hadn’t, and we’d been given the gate code that gave access to the river which they hadn’t. We swapped knowledge! As the light faded we had a quiet stroll by the river, got the kids down and then had some wine, accompanied by city traffic noise.

The traffic noise didn’t abate during the night, and for an hour around 1am there was even more noise as a motorhome arrived on the pitch next to us. Once ready for the day, we headed to reception to get the full details of travel passes for Paris – we were told to buy a travel pass at the train station, but that the bus to the train station only took cash. Oh. Very kindly, the friends we’d made the previous day were at the campsite bus stop and offered to buy us the bus tickets… however in the end it turned out the shuttle bus to the station was free. Once at the train station we bought our Navigo passes and introduced the kids to the concept of a double decker train.

And then we were in the heart of Paris. Now for those of you who followed our travels around Europe (before “van life” was a thing), you’ll know that we don’t like looking like tourists, so will much rather get lost in a large city than stop to get out a map. We arrived at Châtelet–Les Halles station, not knowing at the time that this is the largest underground station in the world and were faced with having to choose which of the many exits to take. We knew Notre Dame was south, so, using the sun as our guide (once we’d chosen a random exit), we strode confidently roughly towards the sun, but a bit to the right… in totally the wrong direction. However, as with most of our other experiences of getting lost, we found something beautiful – exciting, creative, arty fountains outside the Pompidou centre.

From there we meandered towards the river, captivated by street art and fine patisseries in windows. And then we were at Notre Dame with all of its rebuilt splendour. Cities with kids are slightly different than cities as a couple, so we decided not to queue to go in, but instead enjoy its grandeur from the outside, before moving onto the next thing – lunch in a bouillon.

We like to try to eat like locals wherever we go, and a bouillon with its no nonsense menu of hearty food and shared tables sounded like it would be an experience. Inside, the decor was ornate and elaborate with a back-lit stained glass ceiling, however the no-nonsense approach extended to the staff, who took one look at us and gave us the English menus (obviously for efficiency). We won’t mention that our youngest spotted a silhouette of a mouse running across the glass ceiling, but instead will focus on the lovely food, the intriguing way of taking our order (waiter writing on the paper tablecloth) and the bustle of mainly locals around us. 4 full stomachs for 56 Euros.

With just the one day in Paris, the Eiffel Tower was calling us and we had pre-booked tickets to go to the second floor. The children dealt with the queuing brilliantly and soon we were being whisked high into the sky by the lift. We avoided the gift shop up there (noting that the same souvenir that we’d bought for 4 Euros earlier to break a 50 Euro note was 9 Euros up here) and Kiri rebelled against the safety signs, but we loved the view.

Having had enough of queuing for one day we chose to take the stairs back down to the ground, eventually emerging with legs of jelly. With limited time remaining, we had a family conflab to decide whether we’d head for Montematre or whether we’d be best served returning to the campsite via an icecream. The former could have also involved icecream, but the latter option was chosen and, after again some poor navigation on my part, everyone was satisfied. Nearby was a G20 supermarket where we stocked up on supplies for that evening and breakfast the following morning, trying to ignore the fact that the wine we’d bought at the campsite for 9 Euros the previous evening was available here for just under 3 Euros. With baguettes sticking out of our backpacks we hopped on a bus to take us via the Arc de Triomphe on our way home.

We have to thank the kind folk of Paris who we may have confused on public transport that day. Our youngest was keen to try out all of the French they knew… so alternated between greeting strangers with “Bonjour pomme de terre” and announcing “je suis une banane”. It’s a great way to break the ice and start a conversation, however my limited French couldn’t always explain why those phrases had been uttered. So thank you Parisians for your understanding.

We were back at the campsite by 1830 where we tucked into a quick dinner, tucked the kids in to bed and then tucked into some Belgian beer (sorry France) as the light faded, nervously looking at the weather forecast for the following morning.

And what a morning. We were woken by rain at 0430 – hopefully just a passing shower? Hmmm, maybe not. So we made a plan. Get stuff out of the car into the tent, with the kids in the car. We then make sense of our gear, then load everything back into the car. But first coffee. So the kids sat in the tent eating their breakfast. I boiled the kettle, trying to shelter under our open boot. The drizzle got heavier. Proper rain. Then heavy rain. Then torrential rain. The things in the boot started to get wet. The folk in the tent started to get wet as puddles formed on the plastic matting we’d pitched on. I gave up on trying to stay dry. After a blur of sogginess, somehow everyone had been fed and all of our things had been packed away, soaking wet into the car. And then the rain stopped. At which point another British family nearby emerged from their tent, packed up in the dry and moved on. We felt silently judged by the German family on the pitch next to us (not that we stereotype).

Once on the road, we crawled around the Paris ring road in further showers and eventually made it onto the autoroute. After 3 stops in quick succession (we believe boredom in the car had led to over-hydration), we relented and had an early lunch before once more returning to the highway, flying at speeds that our trusty Bertha (RIP – 1990 to 2020) could only have dreamed of. Our destination was a campsite in Montreuil Bellay, but first to Lidl. Alas, the points of interest on the satnav that we used 10 years ago were out of date and there was no longer a Lidl, however we found a HyperU, where the most French thing ever happened.

Almost like a scene from a French textbook, we were at the checkout, when the lady behind me abruptly announced “J’ai perdu ma courgette”. Her companion uttered “Ooh la la”. I glanced to the floor, found the offending article, picked it up and handed it back saying “Voila”. In that moment of pure poetry I forgot all of the wet things in our car and savoured the joy of the scene.

Anyway, we couldn’t hang about. We had rain due at 1700 (it was now 1630) and we didn’t want to pitch the tent in the rain. So we arrived at the campsite, pitched the tent and prayed. Guess what – it didn’t rain at all. The only issue we had was getting tent pegs into rock hard ground – by the time we settled down for our sausage and tomato pasta one-pan dinner, most of our things had dried out. In celebration we let our dinner settle down, then headed to the pool for 45 minutes or so. This was much more our kind of campsite – quiet and chilled, and after a brief wander by the river and a glance at the chateau we got the kids to bed. As we were in the Loire Valley famed for its wine, we did what anyone would have done… and finished the remaining bottles of Belgian beer as the kids slept.

It was a joy to be striking camp in the sun and warmth the following morning. After a breakfast of croissant and pain au chocolat, we packed everything away and made sense of the car. We kept our swimming stuff handy and were in the pool for a final swim when it opened at 10:30. My parents hadn’t believed me the previous night when I’d informed them that swimming shorts were banned in the pool so I’d had to wear fitted trunks… and as I forgot to take a photo of the sign, they probably still don’t believe me!

We popped back to HyperU to grab bread and ham for lunch later and fill up with cheap fuel and then headed south past fields of sunflowers and vineyards. Our lunch stop at an aire gave us a chance to finish the solid block of butter we’d bought on arrival in France. Without a fridge it had done pretty well, but the final dregs were no match for the sun, so we had to dip our baguette into this liquid gold. We delighted in introducing the kids to a “proper” French public toilet (a ceramic-topped hole in the ground) before we hit the autoroute.

We were due to arrive at our gite near Bordeaux at 1630 based on the satnav (we’d said 1700 just to be on the safe side), but it soon became apparent as we hit traffic that this might not happen. The only comfort we took was that all southbound traffic on this first Saturday in August was affected (we see you Daz, likely born in 1963 with your Aston Martin DB11 and personalised numberplate). As we crawled through the toll gate with an ever lengthening ETA, there was one question on our mind. Would our French vocabulary run out of ways of explaining the traffic before the patience of our gite hosts ran out?

To be continued…

The garlic had been harvested (on a whim), the vinegar had been put down the toilet, Muse was blaring from our van’s CD player, our youngest had just announced to Kiri, “You’re certainly accelerating a lot” (just the effect Muse has on her) and we were on our once more to Hayles Fruit farm for another May half term. This time my parents were to join us (they’d sent us pictures of their journey towards the Cotswolds) and my brother’s family had already enjoyed Cotswold Farm Park the previous day. All was well with the world.

Well, mainly well. I’ll admit that collaboration over erecting a tent is possibly the part of our marriage that needs the most work and my rib was twinging a little still after a likely minor fracture a few weeks previously (much like a pole of our event shelter that had suffered in the winds at Greenbelt last year). Oh, and we realised at 5:15pm that we hadn’t bought eggs for breakfast and the farm shop shut at 5. BUT, we had a lovely wander around the lake before bed, there were swifts (or were they swallows?) darting around the field in the evening light and we managed to play crib and drink wine before crashing out for our first night.

The dawn chorus the following morning was magnificent, but a little early for us, and sadly it was accompanied by the first hayfever of the season. The lack of eggs didn’t matter as we improvised with mushrooms, aubergine and chorizo on toast, then had a leisurely breakfast, during which our youngest questioned “what is real?” before promptly laying a football (presumably because we’d forgotten the eggs). All was going swimmingly as we gave the kids a quick rugby lesson, then headed to the farm shop for apple juice (choosing Red Pippin).

And then we got a message at 09:49 from Mum. Dad was unwell again. Followed by a message from Dad apologising for “messing things up again” (which he clearly wasn’t!). Sadly it meant they wouldn’t be joining us on this first day.

Chedworth Roman Villa was to be the venue for the day, where we met up with my brother’s family. They had a snail theme going on there (not entirely sure why), but this meant that as well as exploring this historical site, we could engage in shelled gastropod frivolities such as races with shells on our back. Over lunch we discussed history, as well as our youngest trying to get my sister in law to guess the birds that we had seen on our campsite (I can confirm that they were not sweagles or sweese!) before Kiri went to inspect the hazel hurdles that were dotted around the place. We remained on an avian topic with my parents still very much on our mind, as I confidently said that they were an hour as the crow flies from our campsite, rather than a mile as the crow flies. Maybe the crow isn’t very good at flying… or directions?

Anyhow, we’d left the most exciting part of the villa (the hypercaust and incredible mosaics) until last, which we spent as much time as we could in, whilst also aware that we were out of phone signal and weren’t sure what news from my parents we would be emerging to. We were unanimous (including the kids) in deciding that Granny and Grandpa would want everyone to have an icecream before we moved on from the villa, so that’s what we did!

As we headed back to the car park along a track bordered by overstood coppice (clearly not the source of the hazel for the hurdles), our phones pinged to life, bringing us news that Dad was going to be visited by a doctor which sounded like good news. The rain set in on the way back to the campsite (we’ve done well with the weather today) and we managed to get back to the shop to get eggs for the morning and burgers for tea. History repeated itself as our eldest declared them to still be the best burgers in the world, but we didn’t have as much variety as last year (the butcher in the farm shop has moved on).

It was dry enough after tea for a kick around, but we were obviously tired by the time the kids were settled and we were playing King Domino, as we both kept forgetting which colour we were at times. I reckon I can partially blame the hayfever too!

We were woken several times in the night by strong winds and rain, but by the time we got up the following morning it was settled and sunny. The fried eggs went down a treat and if the pheasants that were wandering around the campsite had got any closer they too would have gone down a treat, but it wasn’t to be. The kids made friends with some other kids who were part of a family of 5 in a motorhome on a nearby pitch, which stirred something within me. I like camping… but I do miss the motorhome life. Maybe one day we’ll have one again?

Our destination today was a place with a big claim; “All things wild” in Evesham. Surely there will be many wild things that aren’t there, like wildfires and wild nights out? We were intrigued though, as we also were when we passed a sign saying “Willersey says no to full fibre poles”. If they’re talking camping, I’m kind of with them after our event shelter pole fracture, or maybe they’re talking about Polish bakeries offering wholegrain loaves? None the wiser, we arrived, ready to be surprised by all of the wild things in the world.

Turns out that lots of wild things don’t like the rain, as many of the fenced areas we saw immediately were devoid of any activity, wild or otherwise, but it didn’t take long to find spiders and cool things like that inside – chameleons, tequila fish and axolotls. All very exciting. As was a soft play area we glimpsed… but we wanted to save that until later, so we instead ensured we were togged up and headed out into the rain. Most animals were being sensible and sheltering from the rain. In fact I’m pretty sure at one stage as I passed a monkey sitting in the warm and dry, it made eye contact with me, looked directly into my soul and slowly shook its head, questioning my life decisions. Minutes later a kookaburra laughed at me. There’s much we can learn from our winged and furred friends. We were slightly confused as to why there were dinosaurs present too, but the rabbit kittens didn’t seem too bothered by their presence.

We retreated inside to have our lunch next to the play area, then after lunch we unleashed the children into the soft play, whilst we attempted to have a grown up conversation (and consume some sneaky liquorice allsorts without the kids noticing). When this naturally came to a close, we wanted to see if it was still raining, so I got out my phone, whilst Kiri did the normal thing and just went outside. You know, I think that monkey was onto something! The rain was slightly more intermittent as we wandered around some slightly less bedraggled animals. I can’t remember the context, but I was tickled when my nephew announced of the capybaras “oh look, there’s a spare one!”. That’s what this afternoon was calling for – a spare capybara… or maybe just an icecream, to celebrate it brightening up.

After a quick ride on the dinosaur road train through an area of animatronics, the rain finally stopped, providing just enough time for us to race on the pedal go karts and have a game of crazy golf. It was clear from me and my brother trailing behind our wives in our scores that we weren’t the ones whose parents were keen golfers! All too soon it was time to leave though, just as the animals were emerging from their shelters!

That evening as the rain eased, the grasses once more set free their pollen to launch a vicious attack on my sinuses – I was so incapacitated at bedtime that I dare not have any alcohol or chocolate due to their histamine qualities and instead we were in bed soon after 9.

The Wednesday was the day of the steam train, so after breakfast, showers and making of packed lunches, we headed to do our washing up… only to be informed by the campsite warden that there was no hot water at the washing up point, as someone had severed the power cable with a lawnmower. Kettle it was then!

At Winchcombe station we gathered as a 10 for the first time this holiday. After sorting logistics to ensure we had a vehicle at the Broadway end, the train blew into the station and Dad remarked that it was clear from the black smoke belching from the engine that a new pope hadn’t yet been chosen. Despite this humour, it really was great to have Mum and Dad with us. The 9 of us got onto the train (Kiri was driving to Broadway) and enjoyed the leisurely pace of chugging through the countryside as a family. Once in Broadway, it was my turn to be chauffeur to head up towards the park with my parents whilst the others walked through the town.

As with last year, the park kept everyone entertained and it was lovely to again manage some grown up conversations whilst the kids happily played. We gathered them in for lunch, then sent them back out to play once fed. Would we be able to meet again before everyone returned home at the end of the holiday? We’d certainly try to. I returned my parents to the station (via a ferret being taken for a walk – don’t ask), returned the van to Kiri and the train pootled back down the valley. We were delayed a bit, and Kiri relayed to us in a message that there had been a minor fire at Winchcombe station, which some very chilled out elderly gentlemen in hi vis jackets had calmly extinguished with buckets. Once at Winchcombe, Kiri joined us in our compartment for the journey down to the racecourse, then back up to Winchcombe, where we went our separate ways.

Hot water was still not fixed, so after our sausage supper the washing up took longer than expected, at which point we realised that we hadn’t bought milk or chocolate. Kiri valiantly took one for the team and returned with a Dairy Milk Daim bar (and some milk I guess… but the chocolate was more memorable) whilst the grasses still mocked me with their pollen.

It wasn’t because we wanted to escape the pollen that caused us to leave the following day – more that Kiri needed to work on the Friday, however I was fairly thankful. We struck camp in a leisurely fashion (including a game of King Domino), thankful that the weather had held out so all of our stuff was dry and were offsite just before midday. Once home, our eldest wanted to see the results of the “science experiment” we’d done with the vinegar down the toilet – very excited to see that it had dissolved the limescale completely in the few days we’d been away. There was a dramatic and swift improvement to my hayfever symptoms and I think the only person who wasn’t so sure about being home was our youngest who announced “I’m not used to a bed!”.

And normally that would be it. Holiday done. However, as our time with my parents had been cut short, when Kiri was at work on Friday we headed back out to meet my family. Our first stop was Pittville Park in Cheltenham as the younger two generations. The kids were unleashed and we ended up playing some sort of game of tag with the kids vs the adults… only none of the adults were entirely sure what the rules were! By the time we needed to move on, our youngest had established themselves at the highest point of one of the web climbing points and refused to come down. With memories of 1990s environmental protests in trees running to months, I resorted to a whispered bribe of a biscuit in the car which broke the deadlock.

Crickley Hill was the place where we were to meet my parents and despite our TomTom satnav showing the new roads at the Air Balloon roundabout (that aren’t due to open until 2027!), we made it there in plenty of time. Lunch was our first priority, after which we headed off towards the hill fort, following signs for the accessible route. This seemed to be taking us a long way round, so we tried a different route… before resorting to the main path from the cafe, which turned out to likely be the most accessible and shortest route of all! Just enough time was spent engaged in races, games and tree climbing at the fort to justify a final icecream of the holiday before we bade farewell to everyone and headed home for tea.

But there’s still more! And this is a key life lesson kids. As Kiri had missed out on an icecream and we’d reached the end of half term, on the Saturday we had a trip to buy some Wholly Gelato icecream – arguably the best icecream of the holiday. There’s always room for more icecream.

Over the last few years I’ve had a bit of a tendency to look at our busy lives and conclude that we’re not dedicating enough time to our creativity. Life in the 21st century is busy. Parenthood, quite rightly, takes up a lot of time and energy. Yet we’ve always loved being creative. Our very first blog post in 2011 gave a teaser around the creative mindset going into our wedding and it’s core to what makes us tick – we both love the process of creating something new.

When we first met I still had my little photography business – it was always a side venture which I said I’d conclude when I stopped enjoying it. True to my word, I got to the stage with wedding photos where my self-critical tendencies were spoiling the enjoyment, but also photography has changed wildly over the last 20 years or so. When I started, digital SLR cameras were only in their infancy… and now in many cases camera manufacturers are moving on to mirrorless cameras. But also the compute power within cameras means they’re so much more powerful, and don’t even get me started on the image processing available in the latest phones.

We then had a joint business for a few years, expanding out into illustration, web design and design for print. Much of this was Kiri on her own, but on a few projects (mainly web design) we worked together. But at her core, Kiri is an artist more than a graphic designer and working to commission doesn’t provide her with much freedom for creativity. So we drew that to a close too when we had kids.

Over the last few years, most of our creativity has been more for our own enjoyment and fun, but we wanted to capture it all in one place, so the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that we’ve got a new section to our website – “Creative Stuff”

We’ll keep adding to this section (and we’ve still got a few historical projects that we haven’t got round to uploading yet!), but we’ve started with a representative mix of the stuff we’ve been up to

Photo and Film

The earlier pieces in here are from the photography business where the main focus was on weddings and 3D photography (it never took off!), through multiple time lapses and documentary films of our travels (we’re still sitting on a lot of unprocessed footage!). Probably most recently was our venture into stop-motion Lego animation during COVID lockdowns (when we had time).

View photo and film work

Wood

I’ve always loved working with wood – my GCSE design and technology project was making an oak and chestnut garden gate. I wouldn’t describe myself as a carpenter, but more as someone who bodges stuff with wood – using waste wood to make a cold frame, or children’s playhouse, or bodging together a hidden TV shelf. But in recent times it’s been Kiri who has been working with wood more than me – green wood working and pyrography (firstly preparing the wood as a canvas)

View wood work

Illustration

This was a tricky one to categorise – it’s possibly just “art”. Yes it features illustrations (using both physical mark-making equipment as well as digital tools), but also has things like advent windows that have been created with tape and tissue paper, and more recently the pyrography that Kiri’s been doing – essentially drawing with fire.

View illustration work

Web design / code

Many of the websites listed in this section are historical and are no longer live, or have been taken over by other people but I still do a bit of dabbling here and there – most recently with AI experiments. I guess this site should possibly feature on that list too, but it feels a bit meta to do that!

View web design and code work

Graphic design

There are many things that could have been put in this section (and may at some point be added), but this is mainly historical pieces. It mainly covers “design for print” work such as brochures and newsletter designs, but also includes a bit of dabbling in logo design

View graphic design work

We found it quite interesting when gathering these pieces together that the focus of our previous businesses account for more of the historical pieces (graphic design, web design and photography) and these are creative outlets that we haven’t prioritised as much as others. I guess it reflects that the way our creativity manifests is evolving – there are seasons for certain disciplines, but we’ve always got the option to return to them.

And as for my conclusions that we’re not dedicating time to our creativity? I think the drawing together of all of these bits has corrected my thinking!

Ah, the long summer holidays. It’s easy to feel nostalgic about them in the midst of winter, yet realistically by the time we got to Greenbelt at August bank holiday I think we were all pretty exhausted! The theme of Greenbelt 2024 was “Dream on” which implied that some sort of sleep should happen prior to the dreaming? One of the things that did happen (unlike last year) was that we remembered to take our first night’s dinner out of the freezer to take with us. And we noticed just in time that we’d packed rum instead of wine. I’d call that success!

The bike trailer we’d flat-packed in the van helped with our trips from the car park to our camping spot; down in a hollow along with the friends we camp with each year. Pitching camp was relatively uneventful – we spotted the ants nest just in time, and we strategically pegged the event shelter down mid-way through putting it up, as the wind was rising. Our first night’s dinner was rehydrated with some wine (would have tasted a little odd with rum…!) and as the bottle was open it would have been rude not to have a glass, especially as the water coming from the standpipes around camp was still cloudy. Washing up complete, we wandered into the festival, stopped to chat to a friend (and inadvertently started a queue behind us – these Greenbelters are frightfully British!) and signed up the kids for a skateboarding lesson the next morning (receiving a confirmation email from an ominously-named company called “waiver forever”).

The kids spotted a “Mr Whippy” which we politely declined, explaining at those prices it possibly should be renamed “Mr Whip-round” and instead picking up the staples of bread, eggs and milk from the Milk and Honey store on the way back to the tent. What more could you ask for? Honey maybe? It was getting dark and there were warnings of very strong winds at 4am, so we opened the vents of our event shelter to allow the wind to pass through and settled down to look at the programme. This year I didn’t feel the need to fill my brain with more stuff, so I made a conscious decision to seek out things that would make my heart glad and my soul sing. Chocolate happened to be one of those things, so we consumed some, checked our guy ropes and hunkered down for a windy night.

At 2am I popped out to a portaloo. It was damp and misty outside, but there was an incredible calm. Four hours later it was a different story – the wind in the trees sounded like waves on a rocky shore, the slapping canvas of tents like sails torn asunder. A trip to the portaloo was like sitting on an air bidet… if Dyson made portaloos! Add in the occasional cry from a panicked parent as their child turned into a kite and… OK, I made up that last bit, but it was pretty gusty and at 0630 there were still another couple of hours of high winds to go. We were joined for breakfast by a friend who regaled us with tales of a volunteer left stranded without a tent, but who had been welcomed by others. Our only casualty happened during breakfast, when our lantern crashed down from the top of the shelter into the frying pan of eggs… we were OK with that!

The festival took a while to open whilst they waited for winds to quieten (alas, no skateboarding for the kids!), but eventually we were slowly let in with with the words “please form a wide queue”; the tone of Greenbelt being set with those very words. Be prepared to slow down. Be prepared to stand alongside others. The kids area didn’t open until late in the morning as branches had come down in that area overnight and ironically the Hope and Anchor venue didn’t open for the whole day – strange, because generally two things you need in windy weather are hope and an anchor! Nevertheless, we still found some great stuff – SamSam Bubbleman fusing art and science with his deep understanding of fluid dynamics in a soap bubble show, a picnic lunch accompanied by Martyn Joseph, and then onto a session led by someone who’s collecting old Welsh hymns and augmenting them.

In my head, I kind of pictured a Feet Fall Heavy kind of vibe (Kill it Kid’s album where they sampled Alan Lomax – an American ethnomusicologist who worked to collect and preserve American and British folk music). However, Lleuwen had more of an experimental approach, taking ancient recordings, then layering random drum and bass beats and other sounds, sometimes in different keys or time signatures. I appreciated the sentiment, but the execution of creating a soundscape rather than a piece of music was a bit out there for me. Blue Nun called and my father in law took our youngest to the bar with him, announcing to the bar staff that this would be our youngest’s first time ordering at a bar. To which our youngest interjected “no it isn’t”… left a pause long enough to seed doubt… then finished “only joking!”. My order was a Level Head beer, which ironically came with a convex head.

Our quest for art to bring joy to the soul continued with Arthur the Juggler who had great talent, patter and some of the best diabolo skills I’ve seen. I’m very rarely moved to tears by art, but his routine had me welling up slightly (and no, the Level Head hadn’t been a strong beer!). We then got a chance to have a go at some of the circus skills and I was determined to rekindle the muscle memory of plate spinning from my youth. The only problem I had was that once people could see I could get plates started, I ended up getting so many plates spinning for others that I didn’t have time to focus on my own plates. Deep. After some clay modelling with the kids and some comfortable, familiar, yet moving storytelling from the wonderful Martyn Joseph, we returned to camp for some swift fajitas before dropping our oldest to “late night village”. It might be a slight misnomer as it finished at 21:15… but that was late enough for our child, who returned to camp at 21:40, buzzing, yet confused why we were also going to bed!

Wind the first night. Rain the second… and rain continued to be the order of the day on Saturday. It was tricky staying dry and quiet in the morning as we hadn’t paid for the Tardis add-on to the event shelter, and we’d forgotten to buy eggs the previous evening, so breakfast was healthy peppers, mushrooms and mange tout on toast. We overheard a conspiratorial whisper from our eldest saying “I’ll save my yawns for when Mummy and Daddy aren’t looking so that I can go again tonight” which we chose to ignore and instead I popped into the festival before the others to go to a talk on AI by Professor Beth Singler. I’d missed her talk last year, plus a lot happens in a year with AI.

She describes herself as a digital and cultural anthropologist, so if AI is an onion, she focuses on the outer layer – on how we understand it, on how we interact with it and who is shaping that narrative. You can get a flavour of what she talked about on her website, but it was a rich exploration of where religion and AI intersect – the ethics of it, the responsibilities we have in using the tools built upon this tech, whether there can be spiritual aspects to AI. So some pretty existential questions – once again, a hugely important conversation to have, but I still wonder if we’ve got enough people talking about AI in the right way. It’s ever more pervasive, and with it comes huge costs. I’ve talked in other blog posts about the dabbling that I’m doing to keep on top of it – but do I really want to be part of this machine? I can see that there are / could be useful applications of the tech within churches… summarisation, translation, transcription and reframing of talks from services to make them more accessible… but what about other uses that stray into slightly more questionable territory – re-telling the parables from the bible in 21st century situations? Generating suggestions for prayer based on whatever is in the news (how many times have we looked at bad news and gone “I don’t know how to start praying about this”?)? Every day we make ethical decisions about how eco-friendly we are in our routines, which retailers we shop with etc… our use of AI is just as important a decision to make.

After wandering in the rain with no phone signal, I found the rest of the family in the “Table” venue, listening to conversations around hosting refugees. One of the challenges they spoke of was how to communicate with someone when English isn’t their first language and you don’t speak theirs… well, that is indeed a place where AI is of use.

The highlight of the rest of the day (aside from Lucy Lost It – a top notch entertainer who kept our kids captivated with comedy magic full of joy and wonder) was Lunatraktors who sung songs of socialist resistance fusing Celtic folk influences with funk and vocal improvisation. Their sound emerged from a place of nothing – asking a question of how you make music when the electrics go out, so they sung and used their hands for rhythm. Since then they’ve added a third band member (Synthia… a synthesiser!) and some physical percussion, but their folk sound is still beautifully unique. They announced up front that they were proudly pagan and non-binary and were surprised at the warm and open reception Greenbelt gave them. When their announcement of a song based on the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes elicited a whoop from the crowd, they said they’d consider playing for more Christians in the future! I love Greenbelt. Be prepared to stand alongside others.

Kiri and I escaped at this stage to a panel conversation about living in community with others; the dreams versus the reality. Several models of Christian community were represented and I appreciated the candour with which they spoke – one monk talked about gold coming from living with those we disagree with… and that there is no luxury of walking away if you’re sharing marmalade. Folk from the dispersed Iona community talked about the vows they make to hold each other accountable in each others’ use of money, time and their drive for social justice. They key uniting factor in all of their approaches was having a shared rule of life and explicit boundaries.

Standing half in the marquee for this talk, hood up against the continued rain, my drive and motivation for more content was drying up as everything was still so wet. So we had a quick heads together for a plan and chose to head back to camp for tea. By the time the hot dogs were done, the sun was out, so the four of us sat outside together. I was a little early delivering our eldest to the late night village, so we wandered round the festival as evening fell; bright lights reflected in wide eyes at the awe and wonder and the festivals location “between endless fields”.

And then it was Sunday – in order to get to the communion service on time, we made packed lunches and chose to leave the washing up until later. This year the focus was on refugees and we had a live video link with a small group of Christians in Bethlehem. We were told that for communion there was enough bread for every group to have half a loaf… but we had to distribute it ourselves. How do you do that in a crowd of thousands? Cue loaves flying through the air, trying to make sure every huddle of picnic blankets and chairs had one. And then every settled group was asked to pick up all of their things and move a few metres. We’d only settled there half an hour earlier, but it was surprisingly irritating to have to move with a mass of other people… making sure we had all our things (including the kids!) and then find a new place to settle. What an incredibly powerful illustration of the upheaval of mandated movement.

Queuing was the order of the afternoon. We’d heard rumours that some of the best coffee in the festival could be found in the Orchard so Kiri’s parents went to queue, whilst the rest of us chatted about coppicing with a guy who was turning wood on a pole lathe. The coffee was abandoned as the queue was too long so we found a shorter queue for less exciting coffee, then the kids joined a queue to try some aerial circus skills. This turned out to be a very slow moving queue. We had a picnic in the queue. Kiri and her Mum headed off for an art walk. Kiri’s Dad headed off to a talk. We’d been queuing for 45 minutes by now and our youngest declared a need for the toilet! It’s testament to the safety of Greenbelt that I felt able to leave our oldest queuing whilst the needs of our youngest were met… and similarly half an hour later (told you it was a long queue!) I was left with a very chatty 6 year old boy called Samuel whose favourite number sentence was “13 minus 20 is minus 7”.

By the time we reached the front of the queue, Kiri had returned, so I headed off to grab a spot in Canopy in preparation for Chris Read. The sound check was almost part of the performance – a musical, kind-hearted conversation with the guy on sound desk, then his set provided a glimpse into his Edinburgh Fringe musical about life as a session musician. Both Chris (and Harry who popped up as a special guest) have a lovely gentle warmth in their comedy, with “throwaway” comments such as “this song was originally called… well, actually it’s still called…” delivered with such credibility that maybe they are indeed throwaway. And I love the inspiration for their songs – Chris was asked by someone in child care “how much does your son know about God?” which led him to write a song “my son knows so much more about God than me”.

After some more queuing (this time fruitless – we didn’t get into Playhouse), and some time making little woollen pom poms, we spent a beautifully chilled time listening to new poems from the wonderful Harry Baker. I left early to queue for pizza that would be ready in time for the end of the session… and then queued for chicken for Kiri… and then queued for some exciting Sri Lankan food for me, which was so visually-appealing with its flourescent minty sauce on top that our youngest exclaimed “wait, is that real life food?”. It was indeed, and very tasty at that. It was at this stage that Kiri had a panic – where was her phone? She went off to look for it, but without any joy – what hope is there of recovering a phone at a festival? Even a festival like Greenbelt? I just about managed to get phone signal and called it… it rang… and then was answered. By the lost property folk – someone had found it and handed it in within 19 minutes of it being lost. That’s Greenbelt for you!

We dropped our eldest off at late night village, then decided to stay in the festival so our youngest could experience some of the awe and wonder appreciated by number 1 the previous night. Kiri geeked out on some hazel hurdles and the lights had the same effect as the previous night, but on our other child, however it was decidedly chilly, so we retreated to Canopy once again (I’ve hardly been there in previous festivals, yet that’s the venue we spent most time in this year!) as it was slightly warmer. We were treated to a small folk group who happened to be doing a cover of Teenage Dirtbag. So there we go. Oh, but talking of dirt, when we got back to the tent our decision to leave the washing up that morning came back to bite us. Washing up in the dark is no fun. Boo!

As is often the way with Greenbelt, our final night resulted in more of a lie-in than we normally get at home, with the kids emerging at around 7am. After breakfast the kids were off playing whilst we started to strike camp. As we did, we ended up in a very interesting conversation with the others we camp with as to why we pray. Do we have an interventionist God… and if not, why do we pray – what is it that we think happens? Do other people here our prayers and seek to answer them? Are they prompted to answer by God? Or is it about relationship – slowly getting revelation as to who God is, so we perhaps see the world through a different lens? Does prayer change the person who’s praying?

Reeling from far too much brain activity that early in the morning, we were interrupted by our eldest saying they’d lost a pin badge somewhere in the field. This is a field of long grass. Where the kids had been covering significant distance in their playing. Not quite needle in a haystack territory, but close. A kind camper nearby offered theirs, but we said no… and instead said we’d pray. So we did. Kiri returned from taking a load of our stuff to the van and prayed too. And the back of the pin badge was found (a fair way from our tents)… followed shortly by the badge. No detectorists were involved in the finding. I’m stilling chewing over what happened there.

The campsite shut at 12pm. We went through the gate at 11:58, much to the concern of our eldest, who questioned what might happen if we didn’t get out on time. I think the answer would have been that we would have had a shorter queue out of the car park! However, we passed time eating our lunch in the van, before an uneventful journey home where the kids napped.

So that’s Greenbelt done for another year. That temporary gathering where we form wide queues. Where we stand resolute against the wind. Where we embrace mixing with “other” and having our perceptions challenged. Where we acknowledge our kids probably know more about God than us. Where the lost is found. Where we seek that which will warm the heart, that which feeds the soul and that which causes our eyes to widen in wonder. And maybe, just maybe, we can bring some of that mindset back into our everyday lives.

Mid July this year brought us glorious weather – a veritable heatwave and as the clock ticked down to the final days of term, we eagerly anticipated more of the same as we set off towards West Wales. A last minute dilemma over some leftover plums led to some swift jam-making. A last minute question over whether we should cave into demands from our youngest for an extra blanket led to a happy child. And we were in the car. 24 degrees and sunny. We’d arranged to meet grandparents at the Brecon Beacons reserve centre to travel onwards with them as there was a decent play area there. However the rain meant that our picnic was conducted inside and we couldn’t even see Pen y Fan through the mist. 18 degrees and drizzly.

Picnic consumed, we weren’t even back on the main road when there was a cry of “I’m hungry” from the back of the car. Only 3 hours to go! We queued through Builth Wells due to the Royal Welsh Show, then were flattered by the crowds lining the streets in Rhayader to celebrate our return – we hadn’t realised our previous trip there had made such an impact. Oh… it was the Rhayader carnival they were celebrating. At Llanidloes we chose to take the “mountain route” – a slight risk in an 18 year old car with a clutch on the way out, but at least it was fun driving! Our youngest however wasn’t convinced that the undulating landscape met the threshold to be classed as mountains, leading to a discussion on the relative properties of hills and mountains. Fortunately the mountains became more “mountainy” (i.e pointier!) leading to a declaration from the back that we were travelling “from hills to mountains”.

By the time we arrived in Barmouth, it was 16 degrees and torrential rain, but the posh holiday cottage was weathertight, had a little reading nook up a ladder for the kids and once everyone had some lasagne inside them (accompanied with home-grown-by-grandparents roast beetroot, steamed beetroot leaves and purple mange tout), the weather didn’t matter. The kids settled down for the night whilst some of the grown ups crawled around the floor over maps trying to find Yr Wyddfa. Believe it or not we cracked the wine open after this activity, then settled down to play Nmbr9 until way past bedtime.

Plum jam was the fuel for the following day. Shortly after breakfast the kids’ tablet had a run-in with the slate floor, which the slate floor won unsurprisingly and then we gathered for a quick plan. Given the weather forecast was fairly good, we chose to walk up and over the hill that rises above Barmouth. As we left the town, one of the grown ups remarked “we’ve got a climb on our hands” to which a rather bewildered child repeated “on our hands?”. Fortunately feet sufficed and as we broke out of the ancient woodland onto the moorland at the top, there were stunning views… but probably not quite as stunning as those seen by the paraglider above us. We pressed on, greeting the sheep we met with a “bora baa”, until we hit the wall. Not literally… but that moment in a walk where you just need to press on through. Turns out that Haribo can break through walls, although we chose not to push our luck with little legs and extend the walk to the panoramic viewpoint.

Instead we descended into the town to an icecream shop that provided our little ones with a unicorn flavoured icecream and a chocolate brownie flavoured icecream. Kiri meanwhile fancied chips, so after a wander along the sea front we found a place to park ourselves. The kids tucked into their sandwiches (yes, they’d had pudding first – in our defence it was national icecream day!) whilst I queued for chips.

Suddenly there was an almighty commotion behind me; tears, squawks and cries of injustice. A gull had swooped down and taken a bite out of the sandwich of our youngest, leaving a perfect beak-shaped hole. Whilst the grandparents dealt with the initial attack, our eldest was left defenceless for the second barrage, where another gull (or maybe it was the same one?) swiped the whole sandwich! On my return, I therefore stood guard over the remains of lunch and the newly-purchased chips, poised with a walking pole, ready to take on any further winged marauders.

A short meander took us back to the bungalow where we planned our menu for the rest of the week, then headed out to Co-op to buy said items. Funny how a bara brith just “fell” into the basket! As we prepared a familiar dinner of sausagey tomato pasta, the kids made friends with some horses in the paddock next tdoor who popped their heads over the fence to say hello. Our youngest then made friends with the slate floor, when there was a minor miscalculation of the length of the bench at the end of dinner. Once we’d taken all of the responsible precautions, we decided to test out whether bara brith is suitable medication for a bumped head. Turns out it is! Once the kids were in bed, Canasta was the game of choice as the light faded – a very close game!

The following morning as we watched a rabbit from the breakfast table (or was it watching us…?) we sought to formulate a plan for activities for the rest of the week, so everyone documented their top 5 desires and we tried to shoehorn them into the remaining time (based mainly on the weather forecast). Kiri started a sentence with “Can we say that on Wednesday we’ll prenim… prelinary… prelinimary…?”. Turns out no, we couldn’t say “preliminarily”, so whilst the grandparents took their car off to the nearest charging point, the rest of us togged up for the panoramic walk we’d chosen not to pursue the previous day. There was a specific request from our youngest that we “bring the pogo stick” on the walk… but given we only had a walking pole, there was no bounding up the path. There wasn’t much of a panorama, but there was plenty of mist. A shame we missed the view.

We had originally planned to climb Yr Wyddfa on this holiday, but decided it would be a bit too much for the kids to do both ways, and the logistics of the train wouldn’t work, so our compromise was that we’d at least go and have a look at it. On the way, we stopped in Beddgelert for a wander. The car park would only accept coins or an app payment… we had neither (and no phone signal to download the app), but kindly were lent £3.30. Turns out the car park wouldn’t even accept coins, so we left a note in the car window and treasured the extra icrecream money. Turns out the award-winning icecream was declared as “better than unicorn flavoured”, even if it was accompanied by the grisly tale of the hound of Llewellyn. Full of icecream once more, we spent some time in an incredible woodcraft shop before a short onward drive to see Yr Wyddfa… which was once again foiled by mist!

Our journey back to the cottage took us via Porthmadog where we stocked up on the essentials (petrol, pizza, bucket and spade) before a kids tea of pizza and later a grown up tea of risotto. The evening’s game of canasta was once again close – a forced negative hand immediately forced back by another negative hand!

And then we reached the beach day of the holiday… it’s a shame that it was cloudy as we headed onto the sandy expanse though. We set up camp next to the dunes… and the sun came out… and stayed out! Four of the six of us ventured fully into the sea, whereas paddling was sufficiently cold enough for me…but in my defence three of them had wetsuits! Once we’d had enough of the water, the wetsuits were hung across the dune grasses to dry and work began on sand castles. Kiri focused on building a masterpiece of a city. I focused on digging a hole.

Prior to the holiday I’d had a conversation with one of my colleagues who talked about a tradition in their family of taking garden spades with them whenever they visited a beach. They would then dig a huge hole, creating a large mound of sand next to it. Garden spade I had not. But with a small spade I nevertheless got stuck into digging. I was asked why… and my immediate answer was “because I’m here and I have a spade”, but as I dug, my mind was alight with ponderings. Why indeed? Was it that there is a deep desire to construct? Was it that there is always a need to know what lies beneath? A need to escape? Do I have a need to be productive and “do” rather than just “be”? The hole was getting almost as deep as the ponderings and I was still in decent sand. Folk wandering past started complementing me, to which the only response I could think of was “thank you – I dug it myself”. But I couldn’t dig forever – Kiri’s sandcastle was complete (and even beginning to erode as the sand dried) and the children were restless, so I climbed out of my hole and rejoined reality.

The kids headed off for donkey rides and trampolines as Kiri and I struck camp, before we were drawn once again by the lure of icecreams. All armed with icecreams, my father-in-law asked “can we talk butchers?”, which was misheard by me as “can we talk cwtches?” and by our eldest as “can we talk witches?”. One of my desires was for some Welsh venison (I’ve been spoilt recently by Kiri coming home from her work in the woods with the tasty products of pest control) but in that moment I had to lay aside that desire as we wouldn’t be able to meat it. It was a wise choice of timing to broach the subject whilst in a icrecream related sugary-stupor!

We headed back to base for showers, whilst Kiri applied for a government grant to cover a woodland management course. Mermaid Fish and Chips had come highly recommended, so my Father in law went off to forage, sending news from afar of very long queues. I’ll admit the chips were really good… but apparently the fish was just “OK”. After a sunny day, the sunset was stunning, especially with the friendly horses posing for the picture. We compared the photos taken on our 13 year old DSLR with those taken on an iPhone; it’s just incredible what computing power can do to enhance an image these days!

In the early part of the evening Kiri finished the spoken word part of the song she started at the beginning of the holiday (inspired by the phrase “from hills to mountains”) whilst I finished the first of my novels. Reading that is… not writing! A foolish canasta play then took us further behind on the previous days’ endeavours, but we managed to recoup some of our loss before bedtime called.

It’s a good thing that we hadn’t preliminarificated the Wednesday, as it originally was going to be the sunny day of the holiday and we woke up to rain. We dug out the previously documented desires and realised that many of them had been satisfied, so we turned to the remainder to work out which might work with rain. As the fairground didn’t open until 1030, we started with a trip to a cafe where despite it only being a short time since breakfast, our youngest devoured a huge chocolate brownie and our oldest chose a 4 finger KitKat. I can hardly bring myself to admit this, but the KitKat was nearly consumed by just biting into, rather than splitting into individual fingers.

Anyhow, parenting failures put to one side, we were some of the first on the fairground when it opened; the kids went on the bungee trampolines, then we joined them on the clatterpillar coaster (it was a caterpillar that clattered as it climbed the first uphill) and dodgems. There was a big sign next to the dodgems saying “Not suitable for those with bad backs or expectant Mothers”… and I have to provide another admission – it wasn’t until after I’d been on the dodgems that I dropped a message to my Mum to check if she was expectant. Turns out she wasn’t, so I was safe. On our dodgem car there was a little red light on the steering wheel which flashed and went out when pressed. I couldn’t work out what it was… turbo? Drift? My Father in law later suggested it was probably the oil light. It’s always the oil.

We’d had enough of the rain by now, so we headed off to Corris Caverns where we met Kiri’s brother. The strapline of the caverns is “Dragons, Caverns, Crafts & Gin”, so I was half expecting a shot of gin before each of the other activities, but settled instead for a very tasty rarebit lunch (although had food envy of the lamb cawl that looked incredible). We killed a little time in a wood shop getting inspiration for future woodland craft, before it was time to descend into the underworld. We all donned hard hats as we entered the 8 degree (temperature that is, not incline) tunnels for tales of Arthur in an old mine. An underground boat ride through a waterfall took us to a world of narrow and low tunnels that suddenly opened out into caverns with tableaus and light and sound shows. Between each cavern there was a soundtrack of *thwock* *giggle* constantly repeated as folk bumped their hard hats on the tunnel ceiling. Not so much of a problem for me!

We all enjoyed it although it was pleasant to come back out into the warm air outside, even if it was still raining. We all headed back to the bungalow where we got the kids some tea whilst we mused on the correct way to order a curry – to share or not to share? Who knew it would be so controversial?! Once the curry had been collected and we were eating (mainly sharing!), the next controversial topic of conversation was about reheating rice. Lengthy discussions were had. I’m not sure that minds were changed. I’ll just say that we are all still here and no-one got unwell!

The next morning was equally wet, so called for a lazy morning. I finished my second novel and ended up falling asleep midway through my third. I think I missed the planning for the activity, but I could see the logic in it. As it was already raining, why not go to the wettest place in Wales – Blaenau Ffestiniog?! A picnic lunch had been made to take with us, but most were hungry before we even got in the cars, so much of it was consumed before leaving the bungalow.

Our destination was Zipworld… not to go down a huge zipline (we’ll save that for when the kids can properly appreciate it) but instead to have a game of underground golf. At the end of the safety briefing, we were asked if there were any questions and it was only right to ask whether we were about to play crazy golf or adventure golf? However our safety guide should have been a politician as I was fobbed off with some line about it being a crazy adventure. Maybe. It certainly was fun – we descended in a funicular mine train then came out into a vast cavern with golf holes across several levels, littered with mine-related obstacles (so clearly adventure golf rather than crazy golf). I’ve never worn a helmet when playing golf before (although there have been times with Kiri that I wish I had been!) and I’ve definitely never gone down a large slide to get from one hole to the next! I hope the kids don’t think that all golf courses are like this one. The game ended with a very respectable tie between Kiri and I, just pipped to the win by Kiri’s Dad with one shot less than us. The only way to celebrate…? Icecream! By now you might have guessed what one of the original listed desires was!

Kiri’s brother is a magician with food; I remember very little about that evening apart from incredible flavours of Greece that he conjured up from nowhere – lamb, tabbouleh, tzatziki, wraps… it seemed a shame to let him go home the following day! But that following day our sole focus was the mountain we wished to climb.

By this stage in the holiday, the definition of a mountain had gained clarity in the mind of our youngest and technically as there was no cloud cover, Cadair Idris was not a mountain. We chose not to argue and instead save our energy for the climb; contactless payment wasn’t working in the car park at the bottom and we only had enough change for 4 hours of parking… so we’d better get moving! After a steep climb through the woods, we came out onto the moorland for a gentler incline. We pondered on whether there’s a Welsh equivalent of Kendal mint cake to give energy when climbing the mountains of Wales. Maybe the thin air gave us clarity of thought (clouded our perceptions?), but we decided then and there to patent the concept of hazel-smoked Welsh sheep jerky. Folks, you heard it here first!

Our musings were interrupted by a young child who needed the loo… we’ll leave the details to the reader’s imagination, but maybe the rocks that we placed to cover the evidence (don’t worry, we burned off the loo roll) will be misinterpreted as a cairn, and future generations will wonder why there’s a pile of rocks so far off the track. Anyway, we made it to the “Clean Cow” glacial lake (yes, we know it’s actually called Llyn Cau… but it sounds like clean cow!) which we had decided would be the highest we’d climb with kids of this age (the route we took was listed as hard / strenuous… but I reckon that’s probably the upper parts that we didn’t get to! https://snowdonia.gov.wales/walk/minffordd-path/). It had only taken one Haribo of encouragement to get there, so we settled down for a picnic lunch, rounded off with buttered bara brith and the rest of my family going for a paddle in a very cold lake!

As we started our descent, we spotted wild blueberries which made for a tasty bonus dessert once we were sure we weren’t going to be eating something poisonous. Purely by chance (ahem) a Haribo was required at exactly the same spot on the way down as on the way up… but we made it down only 15 minutes late to the car park.

Dongellau called us, firstly for Kiri’s parents’ car to be charged, but more importantly so that the final icecream of the holiday could be consumed. As we wandered around this pretty little village we were drawn to the windows of estate agents – a 4 bed cottage with 2 acres of woodland for £260k? Oooh, that’s a bit tempting… but probably a bit too far away. Instead we spent our money on ingredients for a carbonara dinner before tucking the kids into bed and watching a very rainy Olympics opening ceremony on the Seine. See, it’s not just Wales that’s wet!

We tried to carry the spirit of the Olympics with us as we drove home the following morning… we were certainly urging our car to go faster as we went higher and the clutch smelled worse and worse. And we were hoping that the stomach of our oldest would be stronger when there was an announcement of “I feel sick” within a few minutes of getting in the car. However “The Dragon Game” was a good distraction – the left side of the car battling against the right side to see which would pass the most dragons. Early on we had to clarify the rules with regards to Welsh flag bunting… which we agreed would count as one dragon. We were neck and neck as we crossed the border back into England; would it be a draw? As we stopped in Craven Arms for the loo and a bite to eat (a scone with jam and… BUTTER? Where’s the cream? Shocking!), the right side of the car went one ahead. And all the way from there back to Gloucestershire, from mountains, to hills, to flood plains, we didn’t see another single dragon… until we spotted one on the left side of the car on our very road.

Our kids obviously had caught the competitive bug, as it was announced on our arrival home that we all had to sign up for the “family Olympics”:

Following a quick scan of the events, I chose eating and stretching. Ah, that’s my kind of competition!

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.

Thus wrote the poet Robert Burns. And “a-gley” our plans certainly went for our May half term holiday! Plan A was for a family celebration of a milestone birthday over a few days in the Cotswolds with my brother’s family and my parents. However with my Dad struck down with mysterious chronic leg pain, my parents (the catalyst for the gathering) reluctantly had to withdraw. Plan B was to carry on without them… however the weekend before, our eldest and Kiri were ill with a heavy cold and fever and by the Thursday before the holiday, I too had it (Kiri had forbidden me from being ill during the holiday and I generally try to be compliant). Plan C was to therefore delay our camping by a day, so I called the campsite on the Thursday and said we’d be with them on the Sunday rather than the Saturday. An hour later they called back to say they were cancelling our booking altogether… because the campsite was waterlogged. We booked a different, drier campsite, refusing to abandon the plans altogether.

By Sunday there were 3 of us unwell, so the 4 of us we called a family council meeting over a lunch of pizza to decide whether to stick with plan D, starting firstly with a discussion as to how I should be addressed as chair. The meeting was one containing many tangents, including whether socks count as underwear, as sometimes they’re not under anything… moving to acknowledging it’s more logical to call trousers “pants”, as “pants” is short for “underpants”… that which goes under the pants. However… we were unanimous in agreeing to go camping and the meeting closed with an action for me to find out why minutes taken at a meeting are called minutes. A small insight into family life.

The rain stopped. We loaded up our van marvelling at the leftover space as we normally have our little hatchback bursting at the seams. The tyres were pumped up to deal with the extra weight of calpol and paracetamol. We dosed ourselves up, and off we went – heading for Hayles Fruit Farm. The engine was barely warm when we arrived to an incredibly enthusiastic welcome from Mel, the campsite warden. We picked our pitch, eyeing up the dark clouds gathering and wondering whether the low rumbling in the distance was a steam train or thunder. Amazingly the rain held out until we’d got up both our tent and gazebo – the first time we’ve decided to go all posh with camping and have an additional shelter.

Once the washing up was complete after a dinner of leftover pizza, we played Uno and Crib with our eldest before sitting down to watch the swallows darting over the field; birds of prey hovering expectantly in the distance. We’d made the right call. And the fresh air was possibly even making us better. Or maybe it was just the wine?

It was either the dawn chorus or our youngest that woke us at 0430… but somehow we managed to hold out until 0715 for our first coffee. We realised that we’d made an error in our packing as we’d assumed the farm shop would be open to buy milk, but according to their website, the shop wasn’t open on a Monday. We improvised… then had a low key start to the morning with a kick around of a football. Ponies had joined us in the field and we decided to have a wander to get our bearings. As we headed towards the shop we saw that it was open! Now there’s a lesson kids – never trust anything your read on the web… especially now generative AI is encroaching! Anyhow, we reserved some burgers to pick up later and returned some veg and Jonagold apple juice to the tent, then set off towards Cotswold Farm Park.

On the short drive towards Cotswold Farm Park, we spotted a car with a funny contraption on top, just about to pull out of a side road – the Google StreetView car! And it began to follow us. Sensing an opportunity, at the next possible occasion, we pulled into the side of the road, leaped out of the van, and hastily arranged ourselves into a tableau, forever to be immortalised on Google Maps! Well. That was the idea. It turns out the photo that they used for that section of road was one from their car travelling in the other direction, so the effort was wasted… but at least Penny is featured where we passed the car in the side road.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, we arrived at the farm park and met up with my brother’s family, rushing immediately to the bottle feeding barn. Turned out that was quite a good call, as a torrential shower thundered on the corrugated roof of the barn. We chose to stay in the barn for a shearing demonstration… amused by a sparrow that darted onto the stage just before the demo, hastily changing its mind and flying away. Would have been a very different demo if it had stayed…

As the weather was still inclement, we made our way to the adventure barn to have lunch, but it turns out that an adventure barn is full of… well, adventures. Food eventually was consumed, but not until plenty of playing had happened first, which gave the weather time to get the rain out of its system. We moved onto the rare breeds trail where none of the animals seemed to be hungry, except for the goats, but they happily took the processed grass pellets, despite there being plenty of fresh stuff all around them. Meanwhile, I appreciated seeing the live versions of that night’s dinner.

Soon the grass pellets were all gone and it was time to visit the bouncy pillows. Now forgive me for going off on a slight tangent (no prizes for guessing why the family council meeting went off track!), but I have a thing about signs. I think there are too many signs that just aren’t useful. Let me share three exhibits from the holiday.

Exhibit A: Sign saying a maximum of 30 children at one time on a bouncy pillow. But there’s no-one operating a one in one out system. Did the person who wrote the sign ever meet children? Our youngest is getting really good a subitising (yes we had to look up the word too when their teacher first mentioned it!)… but how can you subitise 30 children? What happens when you add a 31st?

Exhibit B: Car park sign in Bourton. Note the costs for Mon-Sat and the costs for Sun. Why have two sets? Keep it simple folks – or if you’re going to have two sets, why not have a bit of fun, and take a penny off the charges for a Sunday… just to be kind?

Exhibit C: New Road Layout Ahead in Broadway. Now. Let’s think this through. Most folk who drive down a road will either do it regularly, or occasionally. If you do so regularly, whilst the road is changing layout, you will have been subjected to the roadworks. You will know the road layout has changed, as you have witnessed the change in progress. If you drive occasionally, odds are, you won’t remember what the previous layout was. So who is the sign designed for?

I feel this calls for a sign saying “No Unnecessary Signs”. Crumbs, I’ve just realised I’ve had a rant about signs. I must be middle aged – I should probably move to Tunbridge Wells and write letters to The Times.

Anyhow, back to the story! After a bit of bouncing, we ventured through the woodland area, appreciated some bees, and went off to hold some chicks, by which stage Kiri and one of our kids were flagging, so we bade farewell to the cousins and hopped back in the van. After a quick stop at Budgens for supplies, we returned to the campsite and I headed off to the shop to pick up the burgers. As I walked up the field, one of the ponies lifted its head and looked at me. I swear it was staring me down. Then it started to walk towards me. Slowly at first, then gathering pace until it was at a full out gallop, mane and tail streaming behind it. Despite its size, I felt my pulse quicken. Was this the end? Well, I’m typing this, so no… turns out it just wanted to itch its bottom on the telegraph pole next to me… BUT… I think it wanted to show me who was boss.

Our lamb burger was incredible. Our youngest had pork and apple and our eldest declared that their steak burger was “the best burger ever”, so there we have it! The pork and apple burger had a soporific effect (or it might have been the 0430 start…), but our youngest was asleep by half past 6, so we played a game of banagrams with our eldest. Once it was just the two of us for the remaining evening light, we came to the realisation that we probably needed a new water container for camping – not only had this one lost its silicon seal, but the ginger tea had a distinctly soapy taste to it… almost soapy water with essence of ginger. Must have done Kiri some good though, as she had the best hand of crib we’ve had in over a decade of playing together – 6, 7, 7, 8 in her hand and a turn up of 8! Even though it was only 9, we decided to turn in for the night.

6am is a much more reasonable time to wake, especially when it’s possible to doze until 7. However, that’s when the rain started and rain was clearly the order of the morning (although I’m not sure who ordered it!). We assessed the angle of the rain and worked out we could have one side of the gazebo open and we put the coffee on. It was a slightly dysfunctional breakfast time, where our youngest fell off a small camping chair whilst holding a cup of milk… but somehow managed to place the cup into the cup holder of the next door chair. Impressive, but still milk everywhere! Fried egg banjos all round inspired our kids to compose a “we love eggs” song – a moment of sheer joy!

Bourton-on-the-Water-in-the-Rain was the destination for meeting with cousins for the next day of fun. After a quick and efficient conflab (with very few tangents) we decided first to go to the motoring museum… mainly because it was an inside activity! We were possibly more interested in all of the historical artefacts associated with motoring than the kids were, but we all had fun. Kiri and I were drawn to a landrover campervan from the 60s… pondering whether it would be possible for Penny (our van) to take on a third role as a campervan beyond her first role as coppicing van and second as mode of transport for the family. It would be a stretch. We were interested to see that Redex has been around for so long (having needed a lot of it recently for Penny!) and amused that there was a Fisher Price toy garage as an exhibit that’s identical to the one that’s in the kids’ room at home!

The rain was still doing its thing, so the two families headed to respective vehicles to consume lunch (and a dessert of calpol for our youngest!). I don’t know what calpol has in it these days, but as we meandered towards the famous model village, our youngest asked “what’s a bourton”. After several suggestions (it’s not a tangible thing, it’s an ethereal philosophy?), we settled upon a bourton most likely being an American Christmas whisky which is traditionally taken over ice… which is why the Cotswold village specifically distinguishes itself by saying it’s “on the water”. And what a lot of water. The model village was also soggy, but that didn’t stop the kids from pretending they were giants, stomping around a normal sized village. I was drawn to the model village within the model village… which itself had a model village within that. Got to love a bit of recursion!

Despite the rain, we felt duty bound to have an icecream. Not for the first time this holiday we’d looked at each other and said “what would Granny and Grandpa do in this situation” and we felt that they would approve of our choice. We went on a hunt for an inside icecream and found somewhere with indoor seating… so we all piled in, bringing half of the water (and some of the bourton) into the venue, only to be told that they only had vanilla icecream. Out we all trooped, until we found somewhere with more exciting flavours. I channelled my inner Grandpa and went for clotted cream flavour! Following the feeding of some ducks which was accompanied by a game for the parents of “stop my child falling into the stream”, we departed once again, vowing to meet at a train station the following day.

Dinner was wraps, followed by a game of dude dice (with a van where space is almost limitless, we can bring a whole variety of games camping!), after which, the kids were sent to bed and no-one had a high temperature! We celebrated with wine and maltesers, whilst chatting about how to “solve” the church. We didn’t have answers and neither did the ponies who first invaded another pitch, then came to say hi to us. Neither did the low swooping bats in the gathering dusk. So we gave up and went to bed.

On our penultimate morning I woke to hear our eldest excitedly declaring that 4 geese and lots of goslings had been observed during the early morning hedge wee. This morning the eggs were scrambled, not fried… but Kiri’s phone electrics were fried instead, as she dropped her phone down the loo. I won’t say how many phones she’s dropped down a loo previously, but I will say that this didn’t come as a complete surprise, and I will also say that this wouldn’t have happened with a hedge wee. Anyway we settled into our slow morning routine of making packed lunches and doing the washing up, before we drove to Winchcombe where we found a car park that charged one whole pound for one whole day. Don’t need a big or complicated sign for that!

Along with the cousins, we circumnavigated the town to get to the train station, noting that in some seasons trains stop at Hayles Abbey Halt which is less than a mile from our camp site. We like to tackle the big questions in life, so as we waited for our train, we pondered on what the female equivalent is of “fireman” when it comes to those on the footplate of a steam train. Any ideas? We all squeezed into a carriage compartment, complete with sliding door and settled down for a journey up to Broadway. As we were a couple of days after a steam rally, there were plenty of train spotters for us to spot on the way, as well as lovely countryside, but as the track was fairly straight, we couldn’t see the whole train on any sweeping curves.

Once in Broadway our destination was a park on the other side of town, but it was well worth the walk – in fact we spent the whole afternoon there! We gathered for a picnic and then there was something for everyone in terms of playing. Our youngest was happy going around and around on the slide (no, I don’t mean roundabout… I mean doing circuits of going down the slide), I was in uncle mode on the swings for a good half hour and Kiri found a wall. And then those of us who play at being grown ups came up with a strategy for the long walk back to the train – icecreams! Alas, for we found not any of the scoop variety, but verily a freezer was found and icrecream taste buds were sated. In fact we were almost back at the station when our eldest asked “why is this journey taking less time on the way back?”. Icecream my child, icecream. However, when Kiri then announced that if she’d had a choice of icecream or hot drink she’d rather a hot drink, the tune of the eldest was changed, declaring “do you not know how offended I feel?”

For this next journey we didn’t have a compartment, instead finding ourselves in the buffet car where fortuitously there was a hot drink for Kiri. We stayed on the train all the way down to Cheltenham race course so we could do the whole of the track and the kids were happy looking out of the window, drawing and reading together. Once back in Winchcombe, we bade each other farewell outside Coop, before stocking up on the three major food groups for the evening – sausages, beer and chocolate.

On this final evening, our routine was well-established, so after a family washing up session the kids settled fairly easily. The skies were threatening and the temperature had dropped, so Kiri and I sheltered in the gazebo, reflecting on our time away.

The next morning we woke to rain – just what you want when striking a tent! Checking the weather forecast, we noted that there was going to be a window from about 8 until 10:30 where it would be dry, so we consumed our scrambled egg breakfast (but made sure we didn’t consume the slug that had found a home overnight in one of our cups). We then said goodbye to the camping stove, saying we’d see it again at Greenbelt… then promptly had to explain to it that we weren’t at Greenbelt as I got it back out to dry the camping kettle! We’d packed loads of rags in preparation for drying a tent (it’s not advisable to use a camping stove to do that!) so got to work… but everything was still a bit damp. 10:15 came and we were off, asking the kids for the code to the campsite gate for a final time (they’d memorised it faster than us!).

Turns out we missed the rain… the forecast was now just for cloud, so when we got home we hung the groundsheets and tent inners on the washing line and checked our courgettes and tomatoes for slug damage. The following day we put up the gazebo to dry it out, then packed it away. Kiri went to put it in the loft… but no sooner had she gone upstairs than she rushed past me again saying “the bag’s buzzing”. No readers, it wasn’t her fried phone… it was a wasp! To be honest, we were buzzing too – despite foiled plans and grandparents who were sorely missed (as well as just being sore), we’d had a good time. Now to find time for a rescheduled family celebration!

February half term arrived and with it the opportunity for another couple of nights of retreat. Now you might be getting the idea from our recent blog posts that retreating is the only thing that we tend to do, rather than any kind of advancing… but what is missing from the narrative is the very full life we live, that can only be fueled from a place of rest!

Kiri was still midway through a course at Westonbirt Arboretum, learning ancient skills of turning one birch tree into a variety of products. So the plan was for me to take the kids to Llantwit Major on the train with Kiri bringing the van to meet us there after her course. It’s such a picturesque train ride down the Severn estuary from Gloucester to Cardiff and the weather was glorious, promising beautiful views. Alas, the promise was not to be met, for as we arrived at the station our train had been cancelled! Turning to the kids I asked if they were ready for an adventure… and as they were, we sprinted for an alternative train that would take us down to Bristol Parkway where we could then get a train on to Bridgend and change there instead of Cardiff. Whilst prepared with lots of treats to make the train journey pass quickly, it was enough excitement just to look out of the window… and the kids enjoyed the view too!

Once in Llantwit, we got stuck into a Lego minifigures jigsaw and had some lunch before the youngsters headed down to the beach with grandparents. Meanwhile I wandered into the town centre to stock up on supplies for our short retreat, making the schoolboy error of forgetting about the existence of Farmers Pantry for meat. After some down time, Kiri turned up having made a small table by milling a length of birch, shaping it with a travisher, then working the legs into shape with a draw knife on a shave horse.

(Yes, I know in the second photo that’s not a table – this is Kiri on a sunnier day making a kuksa!)

We bade farewell to the kids (including a false start where we were called back for one more hug!) and then set out to Noddfa – our favourite little off-grid cabin in the woods. We passed through flooding on the way, glad of the extra ground clearance Penny (our van) had over Rosa (our car). I’ve been reading The Secret Garden with our eldest recently, which has a beautiful line about spring:

It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth

Now February is a bit early for spring and it was more rain than sunshine, but the snowdrops in the woodland were an early promise of what was to come, as we pushed the wheelbarrow to the cabin. Very little had changed in the year since we were last there – a new container for muddy boots, new storage for wood and a few different decorations (including a wooden compass on the ceiling). But it still lives up to its name – a place of refuge – in our case a place of retreat.

With the fire lit and a simple dinner consumed, we managed just the one round of crib to accompany our beer before crashing out into bed shortly after 8pm.

When you’re in an offgrid cabin, the important questions in life come into sharp perspective. As we woke with the light (mirroring the rain which also started with the light) after 11 hours in bed, what should we prioritise – lighting the fire, or making coffee? The fire won and as we sat enjoying its warming flickering we had a leisurely coffee accompanied by a fried egg banjo and a constant stream of small birds taking advantage of the bird feeder outside the window. Retreat for us is about resting and intentionally taking time to step back and evaluate. The topic of conversation happened to be our finances; how can we be better stewards of what we have.

By the time we’d washed up, we couldn’t believe it was 1130. But that was OK. I’m a bit rubbish at not being productive, so it’s really good discipline for me to slow down and just be. However… we did want to do some exploring, so had a wet drive to get to Ewenni, where it was too wet to get out of Penny (ooh, that rhymes!). We sat outside the priory whilst the rain lashed the outside of our van and used the time to think about how we could ply-line her and make her into a practical coppice worker’s companion. It was clear after our chat that the rain wasn’t easing (indeed it was possibly worse?!), so we made the decision to brave it.

Ewenni Priory is a fascinating place – it’s a lovely little church with really beefy walls, serving as part of the fortifications of the grounds it’s part of. A lady inside chatted to us about the history of the Benedictine community there and how it was founded as an offshoot of an Abbey in Gloucester. Two of the striking architectural features were a leper window through which those outside the church could observe the services held by the monks, and a much newer glass screen with butterflies etched into – inspired by rare butterflies that had been found in nearby meadows. The acoustics were also stunning, but at the time of our visit consumed by the radio of the builders at work!

After such a strenuous morning(!) we were hungry, so aimed for Happy Days in Cowbridge that we’d missed on our previous jaunt to Noddfa. As with the cancelled train, our plan was foiled so we went on a soggy hunt for an alternative venue.

We think that where we ended up was called “Penny Farthing”, although with the typography on their logo, it could have been “Penny EarThing”… or maybe “Penny Earthling”???. As we ordered our jacket potato and soup, we overheard one of the staff calling out “did you check the ham situation?” and minds spiralled to visions of pigs running amok in the kitchen. However, lunch turned out to be rather uneventful with no porcine interruptions.

We returned to Noddfa via Waitrose (we go all posh when we go on retreat!) to pick up some food for dinner and as we wandered through the Coed Hills woodland, we contemplated the woodland at Bryn Gobaith that we’d visited in October. Might that play a part somewhere in our future? Lighting the fire with the waste product birch shavings of Kiri’s latest creation, we decided not to read anything into the “W” having fallen off the ceiling compass and instead settled into an afternoon of reading and resting.

The evening followed the same trajectory as the previous night – after a tomatoey chorizo one pan dinner, we had a couple of games of crib to accompany our wine and chocolate (Kiri won both… as well as the previous night’s game!) and then we were in bed by 9. And the following morning was much the same – fire + coffee + eggs = satisfaction. We’d even managed an extra hour in bed (12 hours!!!) and we mused over our breakfast that this short retreat time had mainly been about rest. The silence of the woodland was only punctuated by the chesty coughs from both of us and the flurry of small birds at the peanuts.

Wednesday also brought the start of Lent so we thought it appropriate to read together the account of the testing of Jesus in the wilderness before we returned to our wee ones via a different, non-flooded route. We observed a sparrowhawk in a neighbours garden before lunch, then had a soggy trip to the beach with the kids. Luckily Penny is made of strong stuff – with neither the reversing sensor of Rosa, nor the reversing routine we adopted with Bertha, as Kiri reversed Penny she declared “I can’t see the wall”, before the wall promptly making contact with Penny. A scratch. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch – she’ll be fine!

Following the children stopping by the robot cow juice dispenser and the consuming of some leftover pancake batter, it was time to return home. Time to spring from our retreat and advance into Lent. A time of fasting and further reflection.

It seems appropriate that 10 years after our travels around Europe in Bertha, we once again have a van! Her purpose will very much be as a coppicer’s van, so she’s a little Ford Transit Connect but large enough to carry hazel products and coppicing tools. We went for the crew van variety, with a row of fold-up seats in the back, so that we can escape as a family in her too. Her name? Penny Van (as in Pen y Fan). So is this a blog post about our first time away in her? Ummm, well, it was meant to be but sadly it wasn’t to be. You see within a couple of weeks of buying her, the DPF (diesel particulate filter) wasn’t working… and it turned out she hadn’t got one… and then the fuel vaporiser needed to be replaced… and then… and then. The joys of purchasing an older vehicle! So rather than departing in the van, we departed with Penny in the hands of our friendly mechanics.

Van or no van, Wales was once again calling us for our biannual retreat, but before retreating we first had the matter of an Aussie Pink Floyd concert to attend. Having picked up our eldest from the first of likely many sleepovers, we packed up the car and headed to Kiri’s parents’ where armed with knives and spoons (not coppicing tools!), the children crafted a pumpkin before we tucked into the best cheese and onion pasty available (courtesy of Church Street Bakery).

After a quick nap in the afternoon we headed out to Cardiff Arena where our nephew was about to experience his first gig. This led to conversations about what our first gig was… I clearly had the coolest claim to fame. Anyone heard of the Barron Knights? Thought not! Anyhow, 50 years after Dark Side of the Moon came out, this evening was all about Pink Floyd… but Aussie style. The prism of the album cover was replaced by the shape of Australia, there was an inflatable kangaroo… but other than that, I’m told it’s as close to the real sound as you can get. The laser show and inflatables were impressive and the angry songs of revolution were brought up to date with modern imagery projected over the stage. A good measure of the demographic of the audience was ladies gloating in the interval that they didn’t have to queue for the toilet whilst a gentleman beside me grumbled “all I need is a good tree”. Alas, for there are no trees at Cardiff Arena.

After a very late night (for us… even though the clocks had gone back!), our youngest chose to wake at 04:30, but bacon sandwiches accompanied by a Rugby World Cup final set us up nicely for the day. Before Kiri and I escaped, we all headed out to the coast, wandering along the cliff tops to Dimhole Bay where we saw the huge fossil in the cliffs. As the tide was right out we then wandered along the shoreline back to Llantwit Major where my brother in law so very nearly caught a huge fish in a tidal pool.

Following an icecream in the bay, then risotto and pumpkin pie back at Kiri’s parents, we bade our children farewell and headed off for a long old journey to our place of retreat. Noddfa was booked up, so we journeyed even closer afield and ended up in Tresilian Wood and a little place called Hide at St Donats. Nestled beneath the trees our resting place was a caban (Welsh mining hut) with a separate private kitchen in a little outbuilding and a pot wash and bathroom in a shepherds hut. The caban had a bed, wood burning stove, little table and chairs and a sea view. Wonderful. Our hosts had apologised that there was a bit of an infestation of ladybirds hibernating in the windows, but we don’t mind – we like ladybirds.

It was all a bit quiet after the excitement of the day and previous night and we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, so we spent some time praying, ate some crisps and then tucked into some bread, cheese, olives and wine for our tea. The electric heater was a bit too noisy, so we lit the stove (encouraged with the help of Kiri’s blow stick) and had a short game of crib before retiring for a very early night.

It wasn’t quite like sleeping under canvas, but we still were able to appreciate the gentle patter of rain in the night and even though we were up before 7, we’d still managed 11 hours of sleep. We stumbled outside to the kitchen (the one down side of the caban) where we rustled up a breakfast of eggs and rolls accompanied by Hide coffee. As we enjoyed our leisurely breakfast, it was great to watch a woodpecker on the grass outside. We then turned to the luxurious rhythm that we adopted on our travels of unhurriedly reading the bible together, reading the book of Philemon. The themes of forgiveness and reconciliation seemed at odds with the very fresh news of the Gaza attack on Israel and subsequent fighting, and news of a “mob” in Dagestan hunting for Jews. We believe in the power of prayer, but it feels like prayers only go so far with situations of this complexity and scale. However, we have to hold onto hope… we have to seek hope.

After an al fresco washing up session, we hopped into the car towards Mountain Ash. When we’d met Katie and Chris (of Coalfield Flower Farm fame) back in the spring they’d mentioned a couple who were bringing new light and life to a hillside farm near Mountain Ash – Bryn Gobaith. We’d listened to their story on a podcast, but wanting to know more had got in touch with Joy and Tim, who very kindly had invited us to visit. As we were fed warming soup and bread we heard more about their vision for reclaiming and refreshing the 300 acres of land they own – around a third of which is usable pasture and woodland. The light across the valley was incredibly stunning as we discussed what it means to be church and what it means to retreat. They are very much not setting up a retreat centre, but want the land to be a place of retreat, community, refreshment and hope… hence the name Bryn Gobaith “Hill of Hope”.

We received a text message from our eldest (they grow so fast!) as Tim went back to work and Joy set about giving us a tour of some of the space. The small flock of sheep in one patch came when they recognised Joy’s voice, we saw a patch where a local housing development project had been creating bio char, an area where pigs had been used to clear some of the land, a space that could be used for camping, woodland crying out to be restored, stone walls that are slowly being rebuilt (it’s not every day you hear someone referring to “our” dry stone waller!) and acres of land with so much potential. Joy was very clear that it will take longer than one generation to fully be restored, but also realistic about the challenges they face with such a large area to try to manage.

Before we left we bought some sausages made from said pigs and headed back towards Hide, taking a phone call en route from Paula at Hide asking for permission to clear ladybirds from our caban! Our dinner was posh hot dogs (the only ever time we shop in Waitrose is on retreat!) after which we spent some time in prayer… it’s not every day that a prayer ends with “…a chainsaw in my hand. Amen”, but I guess that’s preferable to “… a chainsaw in my leg. Amen”! More crib led to not quite such an early night as the previous one, but we still had lights out by 9.

The sausages from the hill of hope (does that make them sausages of hope?) were a beautiful accompaniment to the egg and mushroom rolls for breakfast. Washing up done, I prematurely took our waterproofs to the car before getting stuck in a torrential downpour whilst sheltering under the open boot. And then it was time to be reunited with the kids – out of the 20mph speed limit of retreat and back to the 70mph speed limit of parenting.

We just had time to drop our things off at Llantwit and then we were back out to Jump Jam near Bridgend. It’s not particularly easy to take things easy at a trampoline park with so many exciting things to do – many trampolines, a climbing wall, soft play, large inflatable obstacle course and a long run up to a foam pit… but we did our best to ease ourselves back into things. How do the kids have so much energy!? I’m not sure we managed to wear them out, but we all had fun and followed it with an afternoon of K-Nex and pudding at tea time of freshly-made banana bread.

The following day we managed to grab a wild and windy 5 minutes at the beach before the rain of Storm Ciaran made itself felt and we bade farewall to Wales once more. It was sunny as we unpacked the car back home, finding a stray ladybird in the boot. It’s interesting that in many cultures, ladybirds are seen as a symbol of newness. Or positivity. Some might even say hope.

Every time we go camping, we seek to defy physics – squash every atom of everything that’s in the car to try to fit the maximum amount in! With the weather forecast for Greenbelt this year being decidedly soggy, we’d purchased a new event shelter which took up extra room… but this was offset by us compromising on the size of pillows and quality of mattress. Somehow, it all fitted and we were off, with the soundtrack of bands from previous Greenbelts on the CD player (Wildwood Kin and Lee Bains III) entertaining us as we queued to get onto the site.

Over the course of a few trips between the car and campsite we transported all of our stuff… some trips with the kids, some without (it’s a long old trek!). And we were done. Only a couple of minor issues… first one was that our new airbed was slightly too wide for the sleeping compartment of the tent. Second one explained how we had managed to get everything in the car. Now a trick to simplify the first night of camping anywhere is to make the meal in advance, then freeze it. The frozen food acts as an extra ice block in the cool bag, then all you have to do is heat it up to eat it. However that doesn’t work if the lovely bolognaise is still in the freezer at home! The ever faithful Milk and Honey campsite store provided us with milk and sausages and we were set. Our niece joined us in our camping huddle, setting up her tent with a rather optimistic sign:

At this stage we took the lead from other parents that were in out group “Let’s have wine now as we might not get a chance later”. As we poured it into the plastic beakers the kids normally use at home, our eldest looked slightly alarmed and said “you’re not going to give us wine… are you?”. Instead we cooked them sausages and pasta, leaving them happy (although a little hyper due to the excitement of Greenbelt). A random man wandered into our camping huddle and asked “has anyone got any scissors?”. It being Greenbelt, we gave him some. It’s what you do, although one of our group did at that point recount an exchange from earlier that day when she thought someone asked “can I borrow your mattress?”. Bit of an odd request until you realise that it sounds very similar to “matches”.

At 8pm with the light fading we attempted bedtime, did the washing up and then there was stillness. Despite the campsite heaving (so many more people than last year, even in our early curfew area) there was a certain air of calm as we attempted a triage of the programme for the following few days, before crashing out shortly afterwards.

6am was announced with a phone alarm – but not mine! We were out of the tent by 6:45 and coffee softened the morning as we had a staggered breakfast. We were staggered that our youngest slept until 8am… and very happy that it was a dry night too! Once fed, we assembled a packed lunch, did the washing up, got glitter on the kids and headed into the main festival in time for the 10:30 kids briefing. We passed the green flags and our youngest announced “we’re leaving Greenbelt”. We passed the yellow flags; “we’re entering the festival”. We passed the orange flags; “we’re in the car park”. Hang on a minute… no we’re not… but let’s play along!

After the welcome for the kids, Kiri took our eldest to the Make and Create venue whilst our youngest played with a friend on the Greenbelt owl… and then it was time for the first session I wanted to get to.

The venue of the talk was Exchange – described as a place for exploring new economies / innovation and this particular session run by CMS had a title of “Tech for Good”. It soon became clear that this session was more about apps, with the desired outcome of the session an idea that could be put through in an application for the KingdomCode hackathon. Whilst this wasn’t quite the session that I was expecting, it was interesting to hear how a community project had made use of an alternative currency app (zlto) to allow refugees who had been volunteering to build up points and exchange them for goods. The panellists explained how the world is an increasing hostile environment for those not included in the digital ecosystem – so many services now rely on “online” – payments, banking, universal credit etc.

We were then put into breakout groups to come up with ideas for an app to take to the hackathon based on local issues in our own particular areas. Our group chatted around issues of loneliness, knowing which resources to trust, supporting local business etc… but in our group all of us questioned why an app should be the answer to these. Surely there are existing mainstream platforms that could meet these needs (if technology is even the answer to some of these issues?). Some of the other groups fed back ideas around integration of digital into phone-based services for the elderly (along the lines of the sermon phoneline I set up in the first lockdown)… or using voice-based AI chatbots to allow the lonely to talk to “someone”. All sorts of philosophical / ethical questions come out of that last suggestion. Since Greenbelt it was interesting to see what was actually taken to the hackathon.

I left the session with mixed feelings as I rejoined Kiri and the kids for lunch at Glade (the main open air stage). There we got chatting to a friend of a friend, and when our friends moved off, the friend of a friend stayed. I love the openness to form community at Greenbelt! Our niece had bought some henna and was decorating every exposed limb… and our kids joined in the action. As we sat and munched, we were approached to answer some questions about Greenbelt and sustainability which we did, as well as our niece complimenting the questionner on her mushroom hat. The outcome? She got one for herself!

By now the crowd was building around us for crowd-pleasers Harry and Chris. Their banter-filled comedy jazz rap set was an hour of joy including classics such as “Let’s all play monopoly“. But interspersed were some more thought provoking pieces – “The fear song” (watch out for those ladders!) and then a personal high point – “Every atom of you“. Chris explained that last year they shared some time backstage at Greenbelt with “Dicky Dawks” along with Chris’ son who has downs syndrome. Now Richard Dawkins has previously said that it is immoral to birth someone with downs syndrome. Chris’ response? To choose to love him.

Since midway through Harry and Chris’ performance, our youngest had been saying “I want to go back to the tent”, so after having a short wander to Greenbelt’s newest venue (Orchard) where we had a look at some coppicing products and a pole lathe too, the two of us headed back to camp. I made tea whilst we both appreciated a touch of downtime away from the noise and bustle of the festival. There was still no sign of the forecast rain, but the temperature dropped soon after tea, so we all headed down to the camping village, watched a bit of jousting and then tucked into a hot chocolate in the 24 hour cafe. It was dark by the time we returned to the tents with only a few spots of rain, but at 9pm the heavens opened, so we took that as a sign to all go to bed!

I was once again on kitchen team come Saturday morning – coffee and breakfast, then making packed lunch and doing the washing up, but I was happy with that. I’d circled several items on the programme associated to themes of AI and faith and the first was this morning, however instead we decided that I’d take the kids to the Folk On Nursery Rhyme time whilst Kiri would do some pyrography. Our youngest was obviously in an appropriate mood for the sort of humour to come, as the question “Daddy, can we have a pet tractor one day” was asked whilst on my shoulders on the walk into the festival.

I came across Folk On at my first every Greenbelt back in 2010 and after a few years away, they were back! I wonder whether Harry and Chris would exist without the foundations of comedy music being laid by Folk On? They were trying something new with this short slot for kids, introducing the set with the words “Prepare to be bemused”. The first nursery rhyme was announced followed by “If you know it, feel free to join in… there might be a couple of verses you might not know”. Our eldest looked at me earnestly and said “I only know one verse”. Me too. For example, I’ve never come across the verse “how much is that capybara in the window, the one with the very square poo”. The kids were delighted. The grown ups were amused. Joyful, unashamed silliness – love it!

Sadly whilst we were being entertained, Kiri had been queueing in vain for the pyrography. A site wide power outage was announced shortly afterwards (unrelated to the pyrography!), so we spent a short while down by the lake watching an old-school juggler. After lunch there was a quandry – there was another session on AI that I’d spied with the author of “Robot Souls“, or I could build shelters out of branches with the kids. I was pleased I chose the latter, as on the way we met some giant pigeons (don’t ask!) and then we all enjoyed constructing a shelter that was in no way, shape or form going to keep out the rain that was falling by then!

Kiri’s parents then took the kids for an hour or so whilst Kiri and I had no agenda. Orchard drew us – a lovely place to be even in the rain, especially when accompanied by an appropriately-named Ale Fresco. We returned to camp for tea and Kiri went to do the ice pack run as our hard block of butter was definitely not hard any more. Over tea I got my AI fix for the day, listening to both a teacher’s perspective, but also a teenager’s perspective of ChatGPT and how pervasive it already was, raising questions around critical thinking and trust.

Whilst Kiri headed off to The Rising Special with Lee Bains III, I focussed on encouraging our wee ones to sleep. It took our youngest so long to drift off, that by the time sleep had taken over, our oldest (who was reading in our bedroom compartment) was also asleep, requiring a 17 point turn in our little tent to manouevre the sleeping child into the correct sleeping bag.

Sunday at Greenbelt means communion – gathering from many traditions, celebrating our diversity and being united in one body. As with every year, we shared a little brown paper bag with a few others around us, containing the things we needed. Every participant made a little tissue paper flower that was then passed forward to the front to be made into a giant art work. The theme this year was angels – the expectation that we will meet angels to comfort us, bring us gifts from God, inspire us and kick us into action. Of course there’s a famous song about angels by a certain Robbie Williams, that we all sang together… I don’t know what I made of that, and I would be interested to know what Robbie would have made of it too! So I focused on the unity aspect of the communion.

After a brief journey to the arctic courtesy of some Greenpeace virtual reality, I settled down for a panel discussion on AI that I attempted to live-tweet (link for those of you not on Twitter / X)… but lost connection midway through (not through lack of strong signal, but through lack of bandwidth). The panel were made up of:

• Professor Doctor Beth Singler – an anthropologist assistant professor in digital religions who described herself as “Thinking about what you think about what computers might think”
• Professor Jennifer George – head of computing at Goldsmiths university with a specialism in human-computer interaction
• Doctor Eve Poole – director of Carnegie Trust and author of (amongst other books) Robot Souls

Each panellist had an opportunity to briefly talk about an area of focus. Eve spoke about rights for robots… drawing parallels to both corporations (that have rights so we have something to sue) and animals (that have rights to protect them from us). Jennifer asked about the consequences of the fall and how it changed our relationship with God – as co-creators now, we should be asking what is AI’s relationship with us, others and the world. Beth focused on the concept of the “singularity” – when AI becomes more advanced than its creators, as this conversation is what is driving much of policy at the moment. Will the singularity be a god? Are we blessed by AI?

In response to audience questions, further topics were touched upon such as bias that will always be baked into any AI based on how it is trained, the hallmarks of what it means to have a soul and who has the power. When Jennifer said that it is the responsibility as a Christian to ask the right questions as a designer, developer or manager (or another role) in creation of AI, it led to a bit of soul-searching in terms of how I am presenting AI output through onebread.co.uk. There were some predictions by the panellists around “what next with AI?” (suitably caveated by Beth with “Anthropologists don’t make predictions…”) and then the panel closed. This is the sort of conversation that we need to be having outside of tech and academic circles – we need to be talking about the implications of AI in schools, churches, families and communities because it will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones before we know it.

While I was getting my geek on, Kiri and the kids were doing an altogether much more wholesome activity of making dorodangos (shiny mud dumplings) as a mindful worship activity; “loving something ordinary into something precious”. They’d also had a bit of a run in with some giant silver tubes that were moving around the festival, but as I don’t want to re-awaken the fear in my youngest, I’ll say no more about that!

Today was also to give us a double dose of Ida Mae, described by our oldest as “my favourite ever band”. We’ve been following the musical journey of Chris and Steph since their time in Kill it Kid and it was great to firstly see them at The Rising with Martyn Joseph alongside Tawiah. And what a celebration of music it was with conversations of collaboration and a clearly shared respect amongst all 4 on the stage. I particularly appreciated one of the songs from Ida Mae’s new album – “My whispers are wildfire” with the lines:

All sitting there like church mice
Before an algorithm antichrist
Who knows what to trust?

An exquisite observation of society.

The kids had been taken to a balloon modelling workshop by our niece and reluctantly (because I can’t stand the sound of balloons squeaking) we joined them there after The Rising. It could only be described as balloon carnage, but eventually we emerged from the tent with a couple of balloon dogs and nerves just about still intact. We wanted to catch Ida Mae in Orchard, but needed food, so as with last year we treated ourselves to tasty stuff from some of the food vans on site. We then had a game of “follow the pizza” across the site to ensure that we were in a good spot for Chris and Steph’s performance.

The last time Kiri and I had seen Kill It Kid live was at the Roundhouse in Camden when we lived in London ten years ago and they were cool. Like really cool… almost too cool. What I loved about Chris and Steph’s stage presence this time was that even though the musicality had been taken to the next level, there was a new warmth and playfulness. It was almost as if we were being invited into their creative space – we felt like participants rather than consumers of their music. Absolutely top notch live music… and the kids appreciated the chance to chat to them afterwards and meet their little one, even offering one of the balloon dogs as a gift!

As we headed back to campsite for the final time we each reflected on our top 5 things of this years’ Greenbelt. Our youngest responded with the word “banana” 5 times (despite only having had 3 bananas at the festival!) before were interrupted by a random child who compelled us to stop and watch his diabolo show! Love it.

Before we were properly ready for it, the time came to leave. Kiri’s parents came to camp to pick up our niece and a couple of our bags to take to the car. I struck camp, very happy that it was dry and the only moisture was a little bit of condensation. I mused along with another fellow camper whether the most efficient way next year to transport stuff between car and campsite might be to inflate the tent like a hot air balloon… one to ponder!

We said our goodbyes and headed to the car to change out of our wellies before the drive home. Hmmm. Couldn’t find the bag with the shoes in. Ooops – it had headed off with Kiri’s parents! The queue to leave the car park was immense – it’s always difficult leaving Greenbelt, but normally that’s not on a physical level. Some campers were getting fairly irate and we heard one lady declare “I’m going to rally people and form a barricade”. I didn’t want to point out that this might slow us down even further… but finally we’d left the grounds and our youngest declared “I miss Greenbelt”. I mean… we could always turn around and go back to the car park for a few hours?!

The question on the way home was whether we’d make it home in time to get to Lidl within bank holiday opening hours. What could we have for tea? If only there were a frozen bolognaise…! You’ll be pleased to hear that we did make it to Lidl, although as I wandered round I wondered what the smell was… until I realised it was me. Oh. Thank goodness I received the text from Kiri before I got to the checkout – “Just clocked what else was in the bag with the shoes… our toilet bags”. Time to buy some deodorant!

Noddfa: a Welsh word meaning sanctuary or refuge; a place of renewal. Don’t we all need that at times, right? We certainly did, so when we were looking at AirBnB places for our latest escape without the kids and we stumbled across somewhere called “Noddfa” near Cowbridge, we knew it would be the right place for us.

Now we’re not particular fans of stereotypes and generalisations, but Wales really didn’t do itself any favours on the journey. The skies were clear… then we got to the bridge and couldn’t even see it because of drizzle on the Welsh side – come on Wales, you can do better than that! We battled through the drizzle, dumped the kids with the grandparents, had a quick lasagna made by our niece and nephew and then escaped (via Co-op for supplies) towards the Coed Hills Rural Art Community, where we were met by Andy, the owner of our home for the next 3 nights.

What a place! With some AirBnB places you just have a short interaction with the host… or just pick up a key. Not here; we were treated to a full on tour and history of the site (and its residents) over the next hour – a community of similarly minded folk who have chosen a rural, creative way of life that’s alternative yet adjacent to modern living. The closest we’ve come to something like this was when we visited Bussana Vecchia on our trip. The woodland site is dotted with small, low-footprint dwellings with a large gathering space, allotments, a hand-crafted sauna and shower block and a 20 year old stone circle! And the cabin itself? Nestled at the furthest end of the site, a totally off-grid wooden structure with a 40 litre water tank, a few electric power packs, composting loo and wood burner; equivalent to motorhome living, but static!

It being February, we set to work making the place warm by lighting the wood burner… which got hot so quickly that we had to open a window and take off our jumpers! And then… well… nothing really. We tucked into a Welsh dragon scotch egg (leek and chilli) for dinner, followed by beer and chocolate (which melted in the heat!) as we played KingDomino. Although it was still really early in the evening, with low light outside it felt much later, so we spent some time praying together, then just sat enjoying the stillness. The silence was punctuated occasionally by a nearby owl, but that was it. Peace. And then bed.

We’d been warned as part of the introduction to the cabin that we might be woken by squirrels and indeed we were, but there are worse alarms! There was a squirrel feeder directly outside the kitchen window of the cabin and the chattering and quarreling of the bushy-tailed rats was quite amusing to watch… although we did question whether squirrels should be encouraged, because of the damage they do to native woodland? Once the stove was lit, the space was again warm and with a coffee and egg on bread inside us we settled into a slow and uninterrupted routine. We love the simple life; granted some things are more effort (such as composting loos, and having the charge the lights), but that’s just part of the rhythm.

We wandered through the partially managed woodland back to our car and off to meet a family introduced to us by mutual friends. Katie and Chris are in the process of setting up a social enterprise in Tonyrefail to improve mental health through the growing of cut flowers (obviously they’re cut after they’ve grown). They’ve got a 3 acre patch of land with a semi-level area, along with a hillside of small terraces, all previously grazed by horses. They’d just got tulips in the ground when we met them and it was so exciting to hear their journey and vision. As we wandered the site they patiently and enthusiastically answered our many questions about contacts, training, networks, ideas, experiences and culture within the valleys as we could see ourselves doing something similar (maybe with woodland) in the coming few years. They very kindly invited us for lunch and it was a joy to share food together and have a slow afternoon with them and their delightful children (a little younger than ours) who taught us the Welsh words for ladybird and woodlouse!

Fired up and excited about both Coalfield Flower Farm, but also whatever might be in our own futures, we popped into Lidl to get some stuff for tea (no fridge in the cabin!) before having some down time. Kiri had her head in her sketchbook, I had mine in the Big Issue. A simple tea of fritata and vegetables was followed by a time of reading our bibles together where we chewed upon a meaty passage about submitting to authority as a means of glorifying God, even when that might lead to those who are submitting being subject to unjust suffering. Much conversation and debate ensued which could only really have one satisfactory outcome – prayer!

We cracked into beer and chocolate whilst we played a couple of games of crib, before Kiri spied a box that said “do not touch”. This is where Kiri and I differ – I’m massively compliant and was happy to accept that whatever was in it wasn’t for guests to explore. Kiri on the other hand is more like a cat, so her curiousity was piqued. She claimed that as she didn’t technically touch the box to peer inside it, all was well… which led to a well-mannered musing on the difference between the spirit and the letter of the law; the kind of philosophical conversation that we don’t seem to find time for in our child-filled lives. And what was in the box? Well, I’m not going to say, because I didn’t see what was in it, and coming from a place of compliance, it wouldn’t have been right to ask! Although it can’t have been much after 8pm, it could have been midnight what with the stillness and deep darkness of the woods, so we decided to tune our bodies in with nature and settle down for the night.

It worked, as the following day we woke with the light (despite the blackout curtains), lit the fire, popped the coffee on and had breakfast. Today all we had planned was a circular walk to the Bush Inn for lunch in the nearest village, so we dug out phones to find out opening times. Oh. It was closed on a Monday and Tuesday. Guess what day it was? Yes, Monday! It was a damp morning and we pottered around the cabin, recording a video message for our kids which we struggled to upload due to poor mobile signal. I got quite excited when Kiri announced “I’ve got a squirrel”, but it turned out it was a photo of a squirrel for the kids rather than the protein for our dinner. I got stuck into a book about the local area, particularly appreciating a section which had lists of derivations of place names in Welsh. Llan = a meeting place or church. Coed = wood. We need to find Llancoed (or perhaps found it if it doesn’t exist already?)

But that’s for the future… on this particular day we would settle just for a woodland walk. It was… well, an interesting walk. The surroundings were lovely (despite the drizzle) including an incredible ethereal semi-submerged glade, but most of our energy was expended on a long, at times heated, debate about leadership. We were in the early stages of setting up a community garden in our local area, and grappling with how much we should be leading it with a clearly defined vision (that others could subscribe to), versus how much we should just start something and see how it grows organically (but where folk might not know what they’re signing up to by getting involved). Both approaches have their merits and I don’t think we landed on a particular conclusion, but the process of talking it through was very necessary and helpful, if a little exhausting!

Walk over, we headed into Cowbridge to find some food with no real plan (that’s us, rather than the food… not sure that food generally has a plan, apart from to be eaten?). We somehow ended up in the Waitrose car park and wandered off to find a nice independent tea room or coffee shop. We were amused that one coffee shop chose to advertise itself using the adjective “strong” as the sole selling point of their coffee. Not all who wander are lost, however we didn’t find what we were looking for and ended up in Caffe Nero for a snacky lunch before returning to our car. Finding that we couldn’t open our boot as a Porsche had parked too close to us (such a cliched Waitrose thing to happen) we decided to pop into Waitrose and get ingredients for a posh burger for tea – venison grill steaks (beats squirrel!) and a cheese and onion focaccia. It was only as we departed Cowbridge that we spotted the “Happy Days” tearoom which would have been right up our street. Next time!

Before our luxury dinner (we cooked the venison in chilli oil with a splash of red wine and accompanied it with lemon and garlic olives!), we had a bit more time to read and sketch. It seemed appropriate to dip into one of the books we found in the cabin “Fully automated luxury communism”, which had some mind-expanding concepts. There was an interesting selection of books, ranging from earthy books on woodland through to philosophy and spirituality – it’s a bit difficult to pin down what this place is – possibly just a retreat from the mainstream into… well… anything that’s not mainstream? Predictably Kiri won at crib again, but Uno was more evenly matched. It was a slightly later night than previously, but in the grand scheme of things it was still an early bedtime!
 

And then it was time to emerge from our short hibernation in the woodland bolt hole. We were woken by my alarm (stupidly I’d forgotten to switch it off!), then we pootled around, having a slow breakfast before tidying away and bidding farewell to Noddfa. We’ll be back.

Our emergence into the real world was complete when we were re-united with the kids! First it was pancake time (it being Shrove Tuesday) and then we had a trip to the beach with a hammer and spoon (as you do… apparently the spoon is to tap rocks with, to find out whether there are fossils inside and the hammer to split the rock). Fossil found (the spoon may or may not have played its part), there was a bit of a tricky bedtime as the kids adjusted to us being around again and then we were treated to a rich, spiced tagine for dinner.

Wales is calling us. Welsh woodland is calling us. The question is what steps we take to answer that call. Do we formulate a clear vision, or do we just take a leap of faith and see how it pans out organically?