June

Inspired by our weekend away in the Cotswalds we decided to take the Iceberg for another spin. This time down to the New Forest for an overnight stay. We left early on Saturday morning hoping the drive wouldn’t be too long. Unfortunately a lot of other people seemed to have the same idea so it was pretty slow going. Nonetheless we eventually arrived in New Forest and used our Caravan Club connections to get a spot to stay (even if we were sure that they were all looking distastefully out of their caravans and campervans at us while they had Coronation Street playing in the background.) We took it easy the first day and just decided to go for a walk in the countryside. There was plenty of paddock and a few trees for us to duck and dive through. We even got to say hello to a few of the wild horses which live down in the New Forest. They just roam around like they own the place. As it was spring there were some cute foals around too. The next day we ventured a bit further afield and did some proper forest walking. We checked out some local red deer. We visited the biggest tree in the New Forest. It is pretty big although has probably seen better days. We managed to avoid running over the hundreds of horses everywhere. We also saw the spot where King William II was accidentally killed by one of his men. Oops! By this time the rain had unfortunately set itself in so we were back up to London again.

Darryl had been planning to have his birthday in Amsterdam, however a lack of funding from everyone to make it all happen meant that instead it was birthday in Hampstead, or Hampsterdam. Summer this year was proving somewhat unreliable (to put it mildly) so we were hoping that we would actually see some sun. Luckily for us the sun had come out today and we were able to sit in the beer garden at the Freemansons Arms right next to Hampstead heath and enjoy a few brews. Ricky Gervais was there but as he appeared to be lunching with his family we thought he probably wouldn’t want to join us. As we were so close to the Heath and the weather was dry we decided to head across the road (via M&S) to have ourselves a picnic lunch. It was nice relaxing London park fun with friends (and the odd visit to the copse). Afterwards it was back to Darryl and Beverley’s for a few more drinks a bit of singing and Marcus making sure everyone was being sensible…

A flat party was also long overdue at our place so after a false start a few weeks earlier the Animal Party was underway. Jess came as a bee, Marcus as a horse (sort of), we had Camille the frog, Andy the Meerkat, Nick the Crocodile, Sam the Peacock, Huw the Donkey and a whole menagerie of other animals roaming around our flat. In the usual fashion the party carried on well into the hours of the early morning (although we had gone to bed loooong before that.)

One of the advantages of London is all the big concerts that are held there. This is especially true in Summer when they put up a big stage in Hyde Park and hold various concerts there. This year Hard Rock Calling was again on and one of the nights was being headlined by Bon Jovi. Now we didn’t actually have tickets to go see Bon Jovi but because the stage just has a big wall around it you can go sit outside the wall and listen for free, even if you can’t actually see what is going on. Darryl had organised the usual suspects to attend. Who would have thought Darryl was such a huge Bon Jovi fan? We certainly discovered once Jon and the boys started playing because Darryl knew ALL the words. It was all good fun and another good excuse to have a picnic in the park.

As we said before the summer weather in London this year wasn’t the greatest so any chance we got to spend some time outside we did. One of the parks we hadn’t managed to visit was one of the biggest, Richmond Park. With great weather arriving on the last weekend of June, we jumped onto the Overground and hopped off at Richmond heading in the general direction of where we assumed the Park must be. After a hike up the hill we found the entrance to the park and proceeded to sit in the shade for a nice picnic lunch. If you are lucky in the park you may see deer roaming (it was Henry VIII’s hunting ground after all). We didn’t see any roaming but there were plenty sitting around enjoying the sun. We also got a look at King Henry’s Mound which has an unobstructed view all the way to St Paul’s Cathedral. Apparently Henry stood there and could see the signal that Anne Boleyn had been executed. Lovely man. The rest of the afternoon was spent exercising our legs, wandering around the park and then taking a rest in the shade. It was nice to finally get some summer weather and nicer that we could be somewhere so green and open to enjoy it.

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