Monday morning arrived, we were woken bright and early by three very excited children! All the bags were packed and ready by the front door, and hubby spent an hour playing car Tetris to get it all in the car! The kids were squeezed in amongst pillows, blankets and sleeping bags and we were off!Nearly two hours later, we arrived to a very wet, and very windy Blue Dolphin Holiday Park. While I checked us in, hubby watched others on the site trying in vain to pitch their tents. I grabbed our pitch details and we nervously made our way to the tent fields.
The only pitch big enough for our tent left was right at the top of the site, with very little shelter. There we found the broken remains of a tent that had been left behind. An airbed still inside the wreckage, and the now ripped free guy lines were still pegged to the ground. I looked at hubby, and he looked at me. The kids were excited and dying to get out of the car. Question was did we brave it and risk suffering the same fate as our previous occupants? Or get back in the car and head home? We decided to go for it!
We grabbed our coats, and heaved the doors open against the wind. The kids watched from the car as we grabbed the windbreak, hoping that between that and the car we'd have some sort of shelter to pitch the tent in. The windbreak took several attempts to put up, pegs flying out of the ground as fast as we could hammer them in. After what seemed like forever it was finally up. We got the kids in their coats, and enlisted their help to get the footprint laid out, a child in each corner to hold it down while we ran round with pegs. (Having three children does have its advantages).
Then came the tent, again getting the kids to sit on corners while we pegged it down, while the wind fought against us. At that point the heavens opened, and the wind got worse. We decided to put the kids back in the car. I then ended up barefoot, guiding the poles into their sleeves while Joe pushed them in. Finally, after many failed attempts, and a constant battle of wills the tent was up, well in a fashion..
We took a look through our food supplies, there was no way we'd get a BBQ or a stove lit in the wind, so opted to head down to the restaurant. It was very loud, not what we were used to from the Golden Sands Haven, but there was food, and wine! So we sat down to eat, although in the back of my mind was the constant worry of whether our tent would still be standing when we returned!
A few large glasses of wine later, and we made the trek back to the tent. The kids were exhausted, and Sam was pale and complaining of tummy ache. We tucked them into bed, covered their sleeping bags with extra blankets, and to our surprise they were fast off in minutes. Then came the long night ahead with the tent blowing all over the place. Somehow we managed to sleep.
We spent the first hour in the arcades, the kids racking up an amazing number of tickets in their first hour. We then made our way to the swimming pool. We were let into the pool at 2:10pm, and were given bands 'just in case' the pool got busy. We were shocked that for a holiday park with accommodation for hundreds of families, there was only around twenty cubicles in the changing rooms, of which four were family sized. We all got changed, fought through the crowd for lockers, and by around 2:30pm we were finally in the pool!
The kids were loving it, even if there was barely any room to move! Unfortunately, despite Loki measuring over a metre tall, the signage at the pool showed him being much smaller than the one metre mark, and so he was refused access to the slides. So while Daddy took the other two, I tried my hardest to keep him occupied, while he screamed for the slides. They then opened the outdoor pool, which we had been told was heated, so we thought we'd give it a go. It was freezing! Every family that headed out, came straight back in. Obviously it wasn't heated, if it was then the heaters weren't working! After only twenty minutes in the pool, an announcement came over the tannoy. 'Could all people with red bands please exit the pool'.
We proceeded to drag three screaming, upset children out of the pool and towards the showers. By the time we got there was a huge queue for the dozen poolside showers. By the time we'd showered and got our towels, there was a queue for the changing rooms. More people were still being let into the pool, and so we stood for fifteen minutes with three cold children, before finally getting a cubicle. Even then we had jumped the queue as a kind lady with two older children insisted that we go ahead of her after seeing our shivering small people.
We headed back to the tent, and cooked some burgers on the barbecue, before heading back to the park for the evenings entertainment. We arrived to find the kids entertainment had started early and so only caught the last five minutes. We decided to hang around and have a few drinks to wait for the next set to start. At this point Joe was complaining of a headache, and had started to look very pale. Not half hour later he began shaking, and we made the decision to head back to the tent. We stopped on the way to grab Joe some painkillers, but not five minutes after taking them he started being sick. He headed straight to bed while I got the kids in their PJ's and tucked them into bed too. I spent most of the evening reading, and praying Joe wouldn't be sick in the tent. I finally drifted off to sleep around eleven, but was woken again not long after. Loki had kicked his way out of his sleeping bag and was freezing. I went to tuck him back in and realised he had wet the bed. I can count on one hand the number of times he's wet the bed, it wasn't a situation we'd planned for. Not wanting to wake Joe, I quickly changed him into clean PJ's, and grabbed all three of the kids blankets, one for him to lie on and two to cover him with. Then worrying he'd be cold, I grabbed a spare big towel and put that over him too, and went back to bed.
I was woken not an hour later, he'd wet himself again! This time I took him to the toilet, cleaned him down, and put on his last pair of spare PJ's. With no spare blankets left, and a pile of wet, wee covered bedding building up, I had no other option but to let him sleep in with us. I spent the rest of that night waking every hour and asking him if he needed the toilet. Every noise woke me, and with three of us on a single airbed, getting comfy was impossible.
The next day the weather had reverted back to wind and rain. Our attempts to cook resulted in a windbreak snapping into three pieces, and a stove that wouldn't stay lit. We also had a bin bag full of bedding that needed washing, and so we ventured back down to the park to for some breakfast, and while Joe and the kids were eating I headed to the launderette. Finally all the bedding was washed and dried, and we took the kids round the arcades for an hour. It had started to rain seemed to have subsided but the wind was getting worse, worrying about the tent, we headed back. The kids spent the rest of the day playing battleship and Go fish. Around 4pm the rain stopped, and while the wind was still going strong, our neighbours were out packing up. We let the kids run around outside for a while, and got chatting. They said the forecast they'd seen said there was due to be a thunder and lightning storm over night, with more strong winds forecast for Thursday and so they were heading home early. Their tent had seemed much sturdier than ours in the wind, we talked about packing up, but with sunshine forecast for Friday and Saturday we decided to risk it and stay. The rain started again at 5pm and so we decided to opt for a Burger King tea, as without a windbreak we now stood no chance of keeping the stove lit and I didn't want to risk lighting a BBQ in the wind.
After eating, we headed out into the sunshine to go back to the tent. No sooner had we left, the heavens opened. We half walked, half ran back to the tent, but by the time we'd made the ten minute walk we were all soaked through to our skin, and our shoes were so wet they made squelching noises when we walked. We dried off and changed into PJ's to play more games.
That night the wind had all but disappeared, and we went to bed content that we'd made the right decision to stay. That was until around midnight. I was woken to the tent sides pushing in around us. The wind was stronger than it had been all week, and the rain had started again. I dived out of bed, and went out to check the guy lines, thankfully they were all still in place. Joe suggested we move the car to try and shelter the tent from the wind, but it was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from, it seemed to be blowing in from all sides. We got back into bed, but I woke every hour, checking on the kids, and checking the guys, until finally the wind subsided around 3am.
Next morning we managed to get the stove lit long enough to cook sausages and bacon, and we decided to go swimming. The kids were excited, and we'd bought a rubber ring for Loki to make up for him not being allowed on the water slide. Unfortunately we were met with the same time restrictions as before, but this time managed forty minutes before we were asked to get out, so spent yet more time at the arcades.We returned to the tent at 2pm. The wind had picked up again, and despite having bought burgers for the BBQ we were forced to admit without our windbreak we couldn't light it. We checked the weather and the once sunny forecast for Friday was now showing even stronger wind and yet more rain. We decided to cut our losses and leave early.
You'd think that once the decision was made the rest would be easy, right? Wrong. No sooner had we started packing up the airbeds, the rain started. It couldn't be more than a shower, rain wasn't even forecast. Wrong again. The showers kept coming, one after another. A new neighbour arrived while we were packing our bags, got halfway through pitching before abandoning their tent and their pitch. We kept going, playing car Tetris again whilst trying desperately to keep everything dry.
We finally got everything in, and chucked the kids in the car while we began taking down the tent. Luckily we managed to get it down between downpours but the tent still went in it's bag damp. Our neighbours returned, and started dismantling their tent. They'd booked a caravan instead and were deserting their camping adventure.
We arrived home, tired, and ready for bed at around 9pm. The kids were exhausted and were in bed asleep not long after. It may have been a stressful week, but for the kids it was one big adventure and they loved every minute! Next time, we'll try a less hill top location, Golden Sands here we come!
