Today we went for a walk in the Malvern Hills with Matt, and we almost got injured twice!

The first walk was fairly uneventful, although it was quite steep and we had a bit of trouble keeping up with Matt, who was powering up the hills. I hadn’t realised how unfit we’d become! It was a gorgeous day though, and the views from the top across the countryside were well worth the climb.
The second walk was much more eventful.

Our first panic was the parking. We’d already paid £6.50 at the previous car park, and when we arrived at the next one, the machine wanted another £6.50. I’m not used to paying to go for a walk, so paying twice didn’t sit right with me.

Then we spotted the small print. The ticket actually covered all of the Malvern Hills car parks for the day. Phew!

Before we set off, we stood watching dozens of paragliders drifting overhead, floating around in the thermals. There were so many of them, I couldn’t work out how they managed to avoid each other.
The walk started along a lovely narrow woodland path. Matt spotted a sign marked ‘MTB Route.’

‘That’s a mountain bike trail,’ I said.

‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘Probably stands for Malvern Trust Board.’

About ten seconds later, two mountain bikers came hurtling towards us.
The path was so narrow I had nowhere to go and just hoped they’d stop in time. Thankfully they veered off around a corner at the last second.

That was close.

Our second close call came when we reached the top of the hill, where the paragliders were getting ready to launch. We watched one take off beautifully. It looked so effortless.

Another pilot was preparing to launch, so we stopped uphill to watch. Mike and Matt stayed back while I wandered a little closer to get some footage.

The pilot’s wife was helping him when, all of a sudden, he took off!

Only instead of gliding away downhill like the previous paraglider, a gust of wind blew him straight towards us.

He narrowly missed his wife, then he was coming for me! I took off running, then turned around just in time to see him heading straight for Mike and Matt.

Mike ducked.

Matt carried on filming.

Thankfully nobody was hurt, and looking back at the footage it was actually pretty funny.

But later that day we heard that a paraglider had been seriously injured and airlifted from the hills.
We couldn’t help wondering if it had been the same guy.

We finished the evening with a game of Scrabble.

Mike proudly played a T on a triple-word score, managing to make both AT and ATE at the same time, giving him a grand total of 8 points!

I said, ‘Matt’s probably sitting there with an X thinking, “I could have got 50 points with that, but you took my spot!”‘

Mike looked at his letters. ‘Oh. I had an X,’

Today we left Butlins and headed up to Ledbury to visit Matt (Mike’s son). It’s normally a 2.5-hour drive from Minehead, but it took us about 3.5 hours due to traffic and roadworks on the motorway. (Yes, we had to take the motorway, otherwise it would have taken 5 hours!)

Matt and Sonia took us for a sightseeing tour of Ledbury, which is a charming historic market town, full of chocolate ripple and wonky-shaped buildings (my favourites).

We went to the Prince of Wales Free House for drinks, and this is a proper olde-worlde pub. And apparently it’s haunted!

Sonia said there had been reports of people’s drinks falling off the tables, but they’d never seen anything before.

We sat down with our pints of Guinness and all was well. Until it was time for our second pint. Mike and I decided to share one, so Matt bought us a can to share. I had just finished pouring our beers and placed the can on the table when the ghost decided to visit!

The can just started sliding across the table, all on its own!

We all just sat there watching it. It was proper spooky.

There had to be a perfectly sensible explanation.

We threw a few ideas around, but the only logical conclusion we could come up with was that the ghost wanted a Guinness. We didn’t stay for a third beer.

After that we went to a beautiful Italian restaurant for dinner. And it was delicious. I chose the creamy salmon pasta, which was delicious, and Mike had a tortilinni.

We were too full for dessert, so we went back to Matt and Sonia’s and had yogurt and mango. Then we sat around outside chatting for the rest of the evening.

We had grand plans to walk to Dunster today.

Then we woke up a bit late… and couldn’t really be bothered.

So instead, we decided to do something even more exciting.

Laundry.

Our plan was to get it over and done with early, but there was a queue. Then, when we finally got a machine, the payment system wasn’t working. There was a bit of a kerfuffle as everyone tried to pay, failed, and started ringing customer services.

Not Mike though.

Despite being the oldest person in the room, he was probably the calmest. While everyone else was flapping about, he quietly downloaded the app, paid through that instead, and had our machine running before anyone else had even finished complaining.

By the time the washing was done, it was 12:30. So much for an early start.

We wandered into town for fish and chips after being told the best place wasn’t on the seafront. Even better, they did senior meals, which means you get free chips with your fish.
Naturally, we both ate far too much and spent the next hour wondering why fish and chips always seems like such a brilliant idea until you’ve actually finished it.

With the day disappearing, we figured we should at least make use of everything we’d paid for at Butlin’s.
Our first ride was the merry-go-round.

That didn’t go entirely to plan either.

Our first idea was to share a horse. I climbed on the front, realised there was absolutely nothing to hold onto apart from the horse’s neck, and decided this wasn’t how I wanted my obituary to read. So Mike climbed off and found himself another horse.

Problem solved.

For about thirty seconds, the horses bobbing up and down felt surprisingly dramatic.
Then it became… a merry-go-round.

Next was the giant slide, where they hand you a sack and encourage you to throw yourself down it. There was a lovely view from the top, although I spent most of the climb concentrating on not dropping my 360 camera while wrestling with a hessian sack.

It was actually pretty tame.

Then we finished the day with tonight’s show, Electric City.

And wow.

It was genuinely next level. Laser lights, glowing costumes, incredible dancers, loads of energy… definitely not what we were expecting, and a great way to finish our last day at Butlins.

Yesterday we vacated our smelly Butlins unit, today we were exhausted!

We grabbed a few hours sleep in the van, and went back to our unit to use the loo. We’d left all the windows open in the hope that the smell would clear out a bit, but it was still hideous. I decided it wasn’t good enough, so I rang them and complained.

They said they would send someone to look in the next 2 hours. I asked if we could just move rooms, but they said it was full. Apparently if we had’ve complained on the first day, they might have been able to move us. I’m not 100% sure that would have been any better.

Anyway, two hours later nobody had been to our room, so I rang again. They said someone will be there within the next two hours (4 hours by this stage).

So we waited another 2 hours and went back to check. A guy was just turning up with an Ozone machine, which is supposed to remove bad smells. He looked at the carpet and decided to clean it first. He said it would take about 2 hours.

So we went to an afternoon show called The Masked Singer. Apparently it is based on a TV series where you have to guess who the masked singer is based on clues they give you. I’d never heard of it.

Anyway, it was fun. They had two masked singers, and a panel on stage, and they even asked members in the audience who they thought it was. I’m not sure anyone actually got it right.

The masked singers turned out to be people I’d never heard of. Some guy from Emerdale farm, and a lady, who was on Emerdale a long time ago.

After that it was time to check out our room. The urine smell had gone, and the carpet was a completely different colour, but now it had a chemical smell from the ozone machine. We wouldn’t be sleeping in there. We left all the windows open though.

That evening we went to a show called Mad For It, and it was a fun cheesy pop sort of thing. A fun way to finish the day. Then back to Bertie to sleep.

One advantage of sleeping in Bertie (there are actually many) is how quiet it is at the edge of the carpark where we camped.

At our unit, people were constantly walking right past our room making lots of racket, oohing and aahing at the tree outside our window which was lit up with fairly lights. We knew to expect this so it didn’t bother us as it’s like being at a festival. But when we got to Bertie it was absolutely silent. And clean!

And that was day two at Butlins.

We arrived at 1 pm. Check-in was in the skyline pavilion which is a big top tent. Immediately it felt like I had walked into Circus-Circus one of the older casinos in Vegas. It really had that vibe about it. But rather that slot machines, there were arcade games. You know, the multilayered coin games where it looks like it’s going to drop any minute but it never does? That’s the level of gambling going on here.

Check-in was super easy and we got our big envelope containing our welcome pack. But we couldn’t go to our room until 5pm. So we went back to our van to look inside our pack, excited there might be goodies inside.

But when we opened it, it was a little disappointing. That big envelope contained only two wrist bands and two key cards.

At 5pm, we were finally able to see our room. And holy crap it stunk. Real bad, like someone had pissed on the floor bad. In hindsight we should have complained straight away, but by this time it was 5.30pm, we were due at Ems and Nicks place for dinner and we had a show to see that night.

Included in the Butlins ticket is accommodation, shows and rides. We paid 300 pounds for 4 nights, which seems pretty good value considering all that is included. The accommodation we chose is basic, just a room, with a bathroom and a jug and mugs. And if it didn’t smell it would have been fine.

Ems and Nick have much nicer accommodation. Theirs is a 3 bedroom apartment with a kitchen. But it was still pretty dirty. Ems spent most of the afternoon cleaning it. I don’t think Butlins put much effort into cleaning here which is pretty shocking.

The evening entertainment was a show called Theatre of Rock which I really enjoyed. Then came the part I was dreading. Going back to our room.

I don’t think I got any sleep at all as I was constantly gagging on the smell. And I kept on thinking how it would be infusing into all our clothes and bags and stuff. We’d brought our cereal into the room with us, but there was no way in hell I would be eating in there.

By the time 4am rolled around and the seagulls started making a racket, I’d had enough.

‘I’m going to go sleep in Bertie,’ I said to Mike who was also restless.

So we picked up ALL our stuff and started trudging back to Bertie at 4.30am. It was still dark and as I came around the corner a guy dressed all in black gave me a fright. I thought he might have been a security guard, although I hadn’t seen one so far.

‘Checking out out early?’ he asked, noticing us loaded up with our backpacks.

‘Nah, just out for an early morning hike,’ I replied, knowing we probably shouldn’t be sleeping on our van.

But he wasn’t a security guard. He was just looking for somewhere to buy a fizzy drink.

We’d parked Bertie at the far end of the carpark in the dark. We crawled inside and didn’t even bother making the bed up. Luckily Berties day set-up has two single beds, so we collapsed and passed out. We were home again.

It rained! Really, it did! Overnight. I woke up and it was all damp outside.

As a result, my nose was streaming. Mike’s had hay fever for a couple of days, and now I have it.

Just some observations from the campground here. People clearly aren’t touring, they come and set up for a week or more I am guessing.

They all have an awning or some sort, which I understand, but the thing that gets me is the clothesline. Not simply a piece of rope like we have that stashes away neatly and has multiple uses. But a proper full on rotator clothesline like you would have in your back yard at home. And absolutely EVERYBODY has one! (They must have been on special at the motorhome show.)

We were both really tired today so we had a quiet day, resting up ready for this weeks adventure at Butlins! I’m not sure whether I am looking forward to it or not.

It has finally cooled down enough to not be a sweaty mess 24 hours a day. We even had our jumpers on this morning and evening.

It’s nice getting up in the morning and being able to boil up our kettle outdoors. There are a load of pigeons here and they are noisy. If you watched our video a few weeks ago, Mike heard the birds saying “can you hear me?”

I hear the pigeons talking too. They are saying “I can’t do poo poo” over and over again. Then they proceed to crap all over the van.

It was supposed to rain today so I spent the day getting a video edited. We probably should have gone out and done something as it didn’t rain at all.

We tried for a healthy day today, starting with a banana, mango and salad smoothie, but the day got progressively worse from there. We had bacon and eggs for lunch, followed by chippies and then some chocolate. And a third coffee.

Not much else happened.

It’s my birthday!

We had a plan for today. Most of it failed.

We started by taking a walk to a nearby town called Winsford. We had a list of elaborate instructions written on paper and a map with lots of useless squiggly lines.

It started off ok, alongside the river, then through a few houses, but then we ended up on farmland. Now, farmland is my least of all favourite places to walk. But, we persisted, in the heat, no shade, opening and closing gates.

But when I got bitten by a horse fly, I decided that was enough. I’ve been bitten by these guys before and they have caused great big welts and were the most painful bite I have ever had. Plus the walk was boring as hell. So after only 30 minutes, we backtracked. It turned out to be a great decision.

I hadn’t wanted to drive anywhere on my birthday, but we decided to head to a little town called Withypool for a cream tea. (Not Devonshire as we are in Sommerset). As it turned out, we’d be driving through the town we’d planned on walking to, so we could see what it was like. As we drove towards the town we saw a couple from camp, ploughing along the road towards it. Suckers.

The town itself was nothing special. Some thatched cottages, a pub and that was about it. So we drove on through, eager to find our cream tea.

We arrived at Withypool and this was a charming little town with a river running through it, and the tea rooms.

We both ordered a cream tea each, whereas one to share would have been more sensible. A giant scone came out with a large tub of clotted cream which looked more like clotted arteries. And two types of jam, strawberry and a blue one. Oh, and a big pot of tea. I was a bit disappointed they had tea bags in it and not tea leaves, but it was still delicious.

And the cream tea was amazing! In England there is this thing. Do you put the jam on first or the cream. We both know that of course it’s the jam. But I have come up with a new one. I call it the slurry. You put the jam on, then the cream, and mix it into a slurry. That is now the best way to do it.

We both really enjoyed our cream tea. Mike, who is probably more of an expert than me, thought the scone was a bit dry, but I actually liked it like that. It was melt in your mouth delicious!

After that we drove along the moors to Tarr steps. These are 800 year old stone steps going across the river. It was mind blowing thinking that these steps have actually lasted 800 years without any mortar or cement. Just sitting there, strategically placed with occasional maintenance.

We walked across and they were so solid, not a rock wobble in sight.

On the way back to camp, we saw the couple who had decided to walk all the way, sitting on the side of the road looking very hot and bothered.

We finished the day with dinner at the local pub near the camp. The Badgers Holt is a really quaint little pub. It felt more like sitting in someone’s living room. There is just the one chef and the one guy serving drinks. It’s interesting as they only take bookings of one seating per half hour so the chef can keep up with meals. So we had the 6pm booking.

We had a Guinness while we waited and a man came in being pulled along by his dog. ‘This dog can smell a pub a mile off,’ he said. ‘I don’t even like pubs but the dog pulls me here.’

I thought it was funny.

We both ordered the aged fillet steak and it was absolutely delicious. Served with chips, onion rings, mushrooms, salad and peas, it was the best steak I have had in a long time (probably since Eve).

After dinner, Mike asked me what the photo of the bird on the wall was. It was a kiwi! A kiwi cricket team had visited in 1986 and gifted a photo of a kiwi. Well, thought it was cool.

Today we packed up from our campsite at Dartmoor, and headed for Exmoor national park. We’ve booked another adults-only campsite for 4 nights.

Now, I know I’ve said I’m not going to take the back roads in England again, but somehow we ended up there again. Old habits die hard.

I figured to get from Dartmoor to Exmoor it might be nice to drive along the moors. But… the moors had other ideas.

It started ok, with only 2 or 3 “I am NOT going down that road” moments. I really wanted to keep Berties sides in tact and I wanted to make it to my birthday.

So we drove along a nice two-laned road which was fine until it suddenly ran out. Well, there was a sign saying the road was closed ahead. So we took a diversion. It was a narrow one-lane road but do-able.

Then, at the end, it narrowed even more into a goat track. Mike would have gone for it, but I refused. I was thinking about Bertie.

So I made an executive decision as I did not want to be sitting in the car all day. We would take the Devon expressway (that undercover motorway from the other day) and just get to our destination.

So we backtracked and hit the highway. For the 10 minutes we would be on it, it seemed a good compromise.

I’ve realised you have to take on a different mind-set when travelling in the UK. It’s no longer about the road tripping and the slow journey on the back roads wondering where you will end up.

It’s now about getting to your destination that you have booked up well in advance, driving via the most efficient method possible, and staying put for more than a day. So that was our new plan.

Mike had booked the Exemoor campsite earlier in the week, in the national park for 4 nights. We’re hoping to do some hiking and visit some local pubs, maybe find a cream tea (we missed the Devonshire tea, dammit), or a ploughman’s lunch.

We arrived at the campground mid-afternoon and it was already busy. Thankfully we were early enough to grab a decent spot as people were streaming in after us. We were in reception when a man came racing in with his caravan and we heard a loud bang. He’d scraped his caravan on the metal pole at the entrance and ripped some of his caravan off. Oops.

By 5pm, the campground was full! I thought that choosing adults-only we would have avoided the mad holiday crowds, but nope! Just a lot of people and their dogs.

But it’s a nice enough spot, right on a river Exe, which is more of a creek.

After dinner we went for a walk into the quaint little village. Just a few houses and a pub – the Badgers Holt – where Mike is taking me to for my birthday. And a phone box on the edge of town. Yes, these still exist!